Every spring, about two billion birds fly through Texas. In urban areas like downtown Fort Worth and Dallas, light pollution can be a deadly hurdle for many migratory species.
Cataloging hundreds of bird collision deaths in the DFW area — which contribute to an estimate of about 3.5 billion deadly bird collisions in the country every year — experts from the Texas Conservation Alliance found that the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex was the third most dangerous area for avian migration nationwide.
So, they tried something new.
The alliance’s Lights Out team convinced downtown businesses to turn down their brightly-lit buildings, reducing light pollution that is otherwise disorienting to birds.
As of Oct. 31 of this year, the team recorded 42 bird mortalities, which is down from the 110 mortalities documented in the fall of 2023.
These deaths are up from springtime records, which counted 33 deadly collisions months prior. But Texas Conservation Alliance community conservation director Mei Ling Lui told the Fort Worth Report that this is still a win, given that fall and winter migration numbers are often higher than spring.
“Because North America is a breeding ground in the summer, there are a lot of birds that actually migrate with their parents or their flock (in the fall),” Ling Liu explained.
Her colleague, Mia Schlicke, a Lights Out, Fort Worth coordinator, said this year’s reported mortalities are still low, considering peak migration runs from Oct. 16 to Nov. 16.
Ling Liu and Schlicke believe this decline in deaths is at least partly thanks to the support of downtown Fort Worth building owners who have agreed to turn off lights overnight after joining the national Lights Out program in 2021.
In addition to making the very simple (literal) switch, Lights Out teaches city officials and other stakeholders how to decrease light pollution and save urban wildlife.
Program leaders also survey other areas in the city to bring into the fold, like suburban areas and college campuses.
“Our campaign is moving toward not just advocacy or talking to city officials. We are actually going to work with the community,” said Ling Liu.
“I think there’s a lot of work to do in the surrounding areas,” added Schlicke.
Fortunately, they can take inspiration from a sundry of other cities and regions.
Lights Out comes from the National Audubon Society, which has spread its efforts across the country, with over 50 cities now participating.
“We want to bring those successful cases to the DFW area and see if we can have [a] similar concept to bring into the city,” said Ling Liu.
Galveston and Houston, Texas have also introduced similar methods, switching off non-essential lighting from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. during spring and autumn migration.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has also developed a way to forecast bird migration during specific times and in specific locations, helping property owners and businesses predict when birds may pass so they can activate Lights Out precautions more accurately.
“Texas is a place where we want to make sure that passage is as easy and safe as possible,” Andrew Farnsworth, a migration ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology told the BBC earlier this year.
Along with the recent introductions in the DFW area, most of Texas’s major cities have integrated the Lights Out program, which according to data collection in cities like Chicago, could lead to a 60% decrease in bird mortality.
And it’s not just a win for the birds, but for everyone who shares an ecosystem with them.
“The whole canary-in-the-coal-mine euphemism is true,” Farnsworth told the BBC. “Birds are good bioindicators and proxies for ecosystem health. Plus, birds look really cool, sound really cool, and have really interesting behaviors.”
Bird lovers in North Texas (and any other participating Lights Out cities) can do their part, too. Lights Out, Fort Worth, for instance, has started using dBird, a website where residents can submit incidents of dead and injured birds, which helps experts target their efforts.
Audubon chapters across the country are also working to introduce Lights Out to even more communities nationwide.
“We’re only one team. We can’t collect all the data on the building collisions. We know there is more happening,” Schlicke told the Fort Worth Reporter.
“So spreading the word that anyone can report a bird collision and help us collect this data is what we’re trying to do with this deeper initiative.”
Header image courtesy of Agha Zain (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
