Design Commission hears how buildings can be safer for birds

No city in Texas has adopted bird-friendly building policies for new construction or retrofits, but the Travis Audubon Society hopes Austin, a designated “Bird City,” will lead the way.

To advance this cause, the organization enlisted Heidi Trudell, a consultant and researcher on preventing bird collisions, to prepare a report that could be presented to city boards and commissions and disseminated to the Central Texas community.

Trudell, who was recently hired by Michigan-based Guardian Glass as a technical adviser, appeared remotely on Monday before Austin’s Design Commission. Last month, she presented to the South Central Waterfront Advisory Board and expects to present to the Environmental Commission in June.

“Every building that we make bird-safe is literally, tangibly saving dozens to hundreds of birds per building per year,” Trudell told the Design Commission. “We can, with a little bit of foresight, actually do something about bird conservation.”

With Austin at the center of North America’s central flyway for hundreds of species of migrating birds, it’s little surprise that the local Audubon Society is actively pursuing bird-friendly building standards.

While added building costs are understandably a concern for developers, materials such as nonreflective glass or covered light fixtures make up a fraction of total project costs, Trudell said, adding that such collision prevention measures also spare building occupants from witnessing or hearing birds crashing into windows.

In Trudell’s report, she cites a library project in a Michigan township that spent an additional $12,000 on bird-safe glass, which represented a tiny fraction of a percent of the total project cost of $5.5 million.

Texas happens to be home to three of the top deadliest cities for birds, but Austin is not one of them. Houston, Dallas and San Antonio each carry that title. Last year, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department designated Austin a “Bird City” because of its bird-friendly actions, including a policy of reducing nonessential lighting during migration as part of a statewide initiative.

In her presentation to the commission, Trudell advised that bird-safe materials be considered early in the design phase.

“If it’s factored in early, you can consider your thermal benefits and glare management,” she said. If the materials aren’t considered until the end of the design phase, “you end up with less aesthetic control and much higher costs.”

To get buy-in from the development community, Trudell suggested using incentives such as allowing additional square footage or height on buildings in exchange for using bird-friendly materials.

While cities and states along the two coasts were among the first to enact bird-safe building regulations, other states and municipalities are also making strides in this area. The Yale Bird-Friendly Building Initiative maintains a database that includes more than two dozen states and cities that have enacted some variation of bird-safety construction requirements. Additionally, the LEED rating system for green buildings has incorporated “bird collision deterrence” into its credit system.

Trudell told the Austin Monitor after Monday’s meeting that she’s hopeful that bird-safe buildings will eventually become the norm, just as seatbelts are today.

“We phased out lead paint and we phased out asbestos, and it’s just a matter of how long it will take to get there,” she said.

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