Atlanta Audubon Society has been awarded a $25,000 grant from the Disney Conservation Fund as part of the Fund’s focus on reversing the decline of threatened wildlife around the world. The conservation grant recognizes Atlanta Audubon’s efforts to reduce bird-building collisions through Project Safe Flight Atlanta. Grant monies will be used to enhance monitoring and reduce bird-building collisions with the goal of making Atlanta a more bird-friendly community.
Project Safe Flight Atlanta, a conservation and engagement effort to understand the issue of bird-building collisions in metro-Atlanta, uses volunteers to patrol selected routes during peak bird migration periods. They collect birds that have died or have been injured after colliding with buildings. Since Project Safe Flight Atlanta launched in 2015, more than 500 birds of 71 different species have been collected.
Current research estimates that between 350 million and 1 billion birds perish each year from colliding with buildings in the United States. Bright nighttime lights can disorient migrating birds or trap them in upward-facing beams of light where they die of exhaustion or land in dangerous areas. During daylight hours, birds struggle with reflective surfaces when they stop to feed or rest, as they are unable to distinguish between a reflection and an open flyway.
The Disney Conservation Fund grant will be used to purchase monitoring equipment for Project Safe Flight Atlanta volunteers, improve data collection, and to fund outreach to local stakeholders, architects, and others on effective window treatments, remediation of problematic buildings, and other solutions that can minimize bird-building collisions.
Information: www.atlantaaudubon.org/project-safe-flight.
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