Save a bird—turn off your lights

Journal of Property Management, Jan-Feb, 2003

Turning off your office lights at night can have a profound effect on reducing bird mortality rates in the city. In a recent study, the Chicago Field Museum tracked the number of dead birds during the migration seasons in 2000 and 2001 around the city's McCormick Place, an immense building with half its surface covered in glass.

The study indicated darkening the building at night reduced the number of dead birds by 88 percent. Armed with this data, the City of Chicago and the U.S. Department of Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service signed the Urban Conservation Treaty for Migratory Birds, which asks that downtown buildings either dim or shut off their lights completely during the spring and fall, when migration is at its heaviest.