Open Collections

Crash course conservation : Evaluating the effectiveness of Feather Friendly® markers and bird-safe murals in reducing bird-window collisions

University of British Columbia. Campus and Community Planning

Human-wildlife conflicts arise out of incompatibilities between the needs, goals, or activities of humans and wildlife, which result in real or perceived threats to either party. Such conflicts encompass not only direct confrontations between humans and wildlife, but also indirect consequences resulting from their impacts on the shared environment. Bird window strikes, or mid-flight collisions between birds and glass window features, are an example of such consequences. Estimated to upwards of 1.3 billion birds each year in North America alone, bird-window collisions are one of the largest anthropomorphic threats to avian populations. With many bird species experiencing a widespread decline in abundance, diversity, and biomass, there is an urgent need to confront the sources of human caused mortalities in birds. The objective of this study was to identify which facades at IRSHDC, CIRS, and MTM may be considered high risk for window collisions, and to evaluate the effectiveness of existing Feather Friendly® window applications and bird safe murals on facades at IRSHDC and CIRS respectively. The results of our study revealed an 84.6% decrease in collisions at IRSHDC facade 1 following the application of Feather Friendly® Markers. We advocate for the application of Feather Friendly® Markers to other high risk facades on UBC campus, and for the continued monitoring of IRSHDC and MTM to better understand the long term effects of such prevention strategies. Future research should analyze the large-scale impacts of collision prevention strategies, and address knowledge gaps in order to target areas of high mortalities and meet conservation goals. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”

Report

eng

2024-07-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88756

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/