Yale bird-Friendly Building Initiative RESEARCH Report

Building Safer Cities for Birds

The Law, Ethics and Animals Program at the Yale Law School (LEAP) and American Bird Conservancy (ABC) published a report in August 2023 about how local laws and policies are speeding up protections for birds from deadly building collisions. The first-of-its-kind report, Building Safer Cities for Birds: How Cities Are Leading the Way on Bird-Friendly Building Policy by Viveca Morris and Meredith Barges, offers insights that will help inform local bird-friendly design standards and policy to significantly reduce avian mortality.

Despite being one of the leading causes of bird death in the country, bird-window collisions have received little attention from U.S. federal and state policymakers to date. In the absence of significant federal and state action to reduce collisions, a growing group of U.S. cities and counties have emerged over the past two decades as leaders in advancing bird-friendly building design. The report identifies and evaluates the effectiveness of U.S. city policies and strategies aimed at accelerating the adoption of bird-safe building design at scale. The report includes five in-depth city case studies and an appendix listing and comparing U.S. bird-safe buildings policies as of July 2023.