Yale Bird-Friendly Building Initiative
Launched in May 2022, the Yale Bird-Friendly Building Initiative aims to accelerate the adoption of bird-friendly policies at Yale and beyond. Co-led by the Law, Ethics & Animals at Yale Law School, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and the Yale Office of Sustainability, the project involves two research projects in partnership with American Bird Conservancy.
The first project focuses on monitoring bird strikes on Yale’s campus and developing a data-driven action plan to significantly reduce bird-window collisions at Yale. The second focuses on researching the impacts of existing bird-friendly building policies and developing new public policy proposals at the city, state, and national levels to accelerate the adoption and development of bird-friendly building design and materials.
Case Study: Yale School of Management’s Edward P. Evans Hall
Starting in April 2018, a group of Yale faculty, staff, students, alumni, and citizen scientists, led by Viveca Morris, Executive Director of the Yale Law, Ethics and Animal Program, began monitoring bird collisions at Yale School of Management’s Edward P. Evans Hall. The building, designed by Foster + Partners, features approximately 130,000 square feet of glass facades, an open-air courtyard with six honeylocust trees, and multiple design features that are unfortunately often linked to bird collisions. The group’s efforts resulted in Connecticut’s first major bird mortality study, using a combination of informal carcass surveys, citizen science observations, and a data-collecting partnership between the building’s facilities staff and the Yale University Peabody Museum of Natural History.