Project Safe Flight

Located at the nexus of hundreds of bird species’ migratory routes, New York City’s tall buildings and reflective glass pose a serious threat to over 100 species of migratory birds, some of which are experiencing long-term population declines. Project Safe Flight protects these birds, many of which migrate at night, through its various initiatives. Conservation efforts focus on collision prevention as well as rescuing injured birds. In the Street Monitoring initiative volunteers patrol the streets of New York City in search of dead and injured birds that collided with buildings. Injured birds are brought to animal care centers or rehabilitators and are released in the wild after their recovery. Dead birds are collected and transferred to a research laboratory. All the collected birds (dead or injured) are entered in our Database, providing a powerful tool for understanding the geography and dynamics of urban bird collisions.

Since the program’s inception in 1997, over 4,000 dead and injured birds have been collected and documented in our database. Project Safe Flight’s Research Program improves our understanding of the causes behind urban bird collisions, and studies ways to prevent bird collisions from occurring. Each migration season a scientific study is conducted involving multiple variables and field research.

Project Safe Flight’s Lights Out New York promotes education and outreach by encouraging owners of tall buildings to turn off lights during migration season to help save night-migrating birds while reducing energy costs. Lights can distract birds from their migration path and cause them to collide with buildings during bad weather. Turning off the lights and drawing the blinds can help save thousands of birds from over 100 different species every year.

Project Safe Flight convened the first Bird-Safe Glass Working Group, a multi-city task force charged with the goal of creating the first ever glass that can be seen by birds. Using such glass on building exteriors could dramatically reduce the number of collisions, which is estimate at 100 million a year in North America alone. The first meeting of the working group, hosted at the NYC Audubon offices in Manhattan, included notable researchers such as Daniel Klem and partnersfrom similar bird-collision prevention programs in Toronto and Chicago.

Common Yellow Throat photo ©Cal Vornberger,
N Junco & White Throated Sparrow photos ©Steve Nanz