Saturday (tomorrow), May 14, 2022, is World Migratory Bird Day 2022. The environmental group behind the campaign states:
Light pollution can adversely affect migratory birds on:
🔴 Behavior
🔴 Activity levels
🔴 Energy expenditure
🔴 Orientation when flying at night
🔴 Migration timing & routes
The theme this year is Dim the Lights:
Artificial light is increasing globally by at least 2 per cent per year and it is known to adversely affect many bird species. Light pollution is a significant threat to migratory birds, causing disorientation when they fly at night, leading to collisions with buildings, perturbing their internal clocks, or interfering with their ability to undertake long-distance migrations.
Solutions to light pollution are readily available. For instance, more and more cities in the world are taking measures to dim building lights during migration phases in spring and autumn. Best practice guidelines are also being developed under the Convention on Migratory Species to address this growing issue and ensure that action is taken globally to help birds migrate safely.
To which yours truly commented:
Wind turbines, called by a Sierra Club official ‘the Cuisinarts of the Air,’ is the real problem.
So what can be said of this tunnel vision of placing “light pollution” ahead of avian mortality? Maybe noise and flicker lights are not helpful to migratory birds? And just maybe the lights are on for a reason …?
Conclusion
The sponsors of “turn the lights off” state:
Through the activities being undertaken on these three flyways and the resulting exchange of information, WMBD wishes to increase the level of awareness about the threats – both general and specific – that birds are facing. By comparing their experiences and concerns, sharing their stories and activities, people around the world will make their voices and actions reach out even further, throughout the flyways, underlying the fact that bird conservation is, indeed, a global issue.
Surely the readership can inform this bird advocacy group that they are missing the forest for the trees. The well documented carnage of the golden eagle, in particular, is plenty of reason to end the double-standard. National Audubon Society, where are you? American Bird Conservancy?