Buildings are the main anthropogenic cause of death for birds in cities, with approximately 16 to 42 million deaths in Canada each year (Machtans et al. 2013). This is largely due to the prevalence of glass in architecture in the form of windows and curtain walls. Birds are unable to perceive glass as a solid object, and as such, collisions often occur as they attempt to fly through transparent glass or towards reflections of vegetation or open sky (Martin, 2011).

Several studies over the last decade have narrowed down the primary risk factors of building collisions to:

• the surface area of building glass (glazing) 

• the proximity and amount of adjacent to glass vegetation such as trees and shrubs which provide habitats and areas for foraging and,

• nighttime light pollution which attracts migratory birds (which is not explored in the scope of this project)

(Cusa, Jackson & Mesure, 2015; Klem et al., 2009).

Even so, patterns of collisions are by no means homogenous and may also be influenced by species and environment specific variables (Cusa, Jackson & Mesure, 2015). For example, the question of whether the orientation of windows or particular sides of a building have a positive effect on bird collision rates is highly dependent on local environmental characteristics and the level of human disturbance, and while some studies have noted the positive effects of building orientation(Bracey et al., 2016), this has not been observed at UBC (DeGroot, 2018).

A number of collaborative research studies conducted through the SEEDS Program with students, operational staff, and Environment and Climate Change Canada

have explored how the boarder literature on bird building collisions applies to the environmental context of UBC and western Canada in general. These studies provided extremely valuable information on the number of bird collisions at certain buildings (Cavers, Chien, Leung & Nam, 2015; Huang & Porter, 2015), and the affects of vegetation reflection (Gentle & Cheung, 2017), and effectiveness of bird friendly design pilots (Park & Lai, 2017).

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This project builds upon the knowledge from these UBC studies to identify examine UBC buildings broadly and model bird collision risk for the purpose of recommending priority areas for retrofits.

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While my mode of analysis is quite coarse scale and broadly identifies entire buildings as priority areas, bird collisions and retrofit strategies are facade specific and I partially address this finer scale analysis by locating high glazing and shaded facades.