Madison’s Bird-safe Glass Ordinance: creating a safer city for birds

Madison is situated in a wonderful area for birds, with its large lakes and wetlands, hundreds of parks and natural areas, and thousands of acres of restored native habitats championed by local conservation organizations. It is located within one of the largest migratory flyways in the world (Mississippi Flyway), the Madison area attracts an incredibly high diversity of bird speciesAs a community, we are proud of the beautiful and diverse landscapes we are surrounded by. This means we have the opportunity and the responsibility to care for the natural resources we are so proud of!

Quick link: Madison’s Bird-Safe Glass Ordinance

In 2020, the City of Madison unanimously passed, with overwhelming public support, Madison’s Bird-Safe Glass Ordinance requiring bird-friendly glass for new building construction projects larger than 10,000 square feet, sky bridges, and ground-level glass features such as sound walls, glass screens, and bus shelters. SoWBA and many citizens supported the effort, and American Bird Conservancy, an international non-profit working on this issue and a partner in our Bird Collision Corps program, provided feedback on the ordinance to improve its bird protections.

While this ordinance was the first of its kind in Wisconsin, this kind of legislation is not new. Similar bird-friendly ordinances have passed in dozens of cities and municipalities, including New York City. And in 2024, Middleton passed a matching ordinance, making more of the greater Madison area more bird-friendly!

In the years since the ordinance has gone into effect, many examples of new buildings using bird-safe glass, often with a pattern baked or etched into the glass (called “frit”) can be seen throughout Madison. Together, we are making the beautiful natural and urban areas around Madison a safer place!

Other cities with bird-safe glass ordinances:

• Middleton, WI

• New York City, NY

• Mountain View, CA

• Toronto, Ontario, Canada

• Portland, OR

• Emeryville, CA

• and others!

Summary: Reflections seen on windows and pass-through effects cause birds to fly at windows. Their hollow bones are susceptible to significant damage or death if they hit a solid surface. Lights bring birds in to urban areas during migration.

Up to one billion birds die from hitting windows each year in the United States alone. That’s a staggering number. And with more buildings using more glass, more birds are dying as a result.

This has been a known problem for a long, long time. The severity of the bird collisions problems has been documented in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. For example, Loss et al 2014 thoroughly examined hundreds of datasets that collectively demonstrate that huge numbers of birds die each year from hitting windows. It is the second-leading cause of human-caused bird deaths annually behind outdoor cats (2.4 billion birds/year).

Listen to this great podcast, 99% Invisible: Murder Most Fowl, that describes the problem (32:18 minutes)

Enter Bird Collision Corps

Since 2018, SoWBA has partnered with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dane County Humane Society’s Wildlife Center, American Bird Conservancy, and local businesses to explore where and how often bird-window collisions happen. This citizen science program, called the Bird Collision Corps, works with trained volunteers to monitor select buildings regularly for evidence of collisions and documents the occurrences. This program is ongoing, and we invite you to be part of it! Learn more at swibirds.org/bcc.

Here is an interview about the need for a Bird Collision Corps, and why bird collisions matter:

Soon after the ordinance was passed in Madison in 2020, a group of developers sued the City, citing added costs and conformity with the state’s uniform building code as primary objections. One of their main goals was to prevent other communities from making similar bird-friendly improvements to their communities’ building standards.

In Spring 2022, American Bird Conservancy, SoWBA, and Wisconsin Society for Ornithology filed an amicus curiae, providing important background information for the judge by summarizing the conservation crisis that window collisions pose to birds, and discussed how solutions like Madison’s building ordinance can save birds’ lives. It also highlighted other municipalities that have enacted bird-friendly building ordinances without issue, and presented research showing that window collisions in Madison are a serious local threat to birds.

On August 16, 2022, a Dane County judge ruled that Madison’s Bird-safe Glass Ordinance is allowable and within the parameters of Wisconsin’s state building code. “What's Good for Birds is Good for Wisconsin” said Judge Nia Trammell.

WILL filed an appeal on the ruling, sending it back to court. Again, ABC, SoWBA, and WSO filed an amicus brief and supported the City through the litigation. On October 5, 2023, a Wisconsin appellate court backed the City of Madison’s ordinance requiring the use of bird-safe glass. Read the article here. The developer group did not respond, so in early November 2023, the Bird-safe Glass Ordinance was officially upheld and in the clear! Read the blog article here.

What about the costs?

A primary argument opponents cite against bird-safe glass is cost. It’s important to note that you can build a bird-friendly building for zero additional cost. There are lots of ways to do so, and it normally means relying less on large banks of glass. For buildings that still choose to use lots of glass, there may be additional costs. However, opponents typically grossly inflate costs by comparing cheap glass with the most expensive bird-friendly glass technology available—and also apply it toward glass costs for the whole project, not just the sections requiring bird-safe solutions. Installing effective bird-safe glass can indeed add upfront cost, but often results in just a fractional increase in total project expense. After all, glass is just one of many, many parts of a whole building.

Importantly, the City of Madison ordinance also allows for many other solutions that simply cover large glass surfaces such as metal screens, fixed solar shading, exterior insect screens—all of which are are quite inexpensive. And the ordinance simply doesn’t apply to all buildings, rather just the ones that want large façades of glass.

The benefits of bird-friendly glass far outweigh any minimal upfront cost.

If glass cost is a concern, then considering bird safety during planning and construction is actually the best way to control it. For example, bird-friendly glass options and solutions are often much more energy efficient, passing on lifetime savings to renters and owners. Many types of patterned glass, for example, reflect solar energy and reduce overall energy consumption for cooling. Therefore, any upfront costs using bird-friendly glass can be recouped with sustained energy savings that benefit building owners and occupants.

Furthermore, National Audubon estimates that installing bird-safe glass during construction of the Minnesota Vikings Stadium would have cost developers an extra $1 million - and would have cost even less had they considered it earlier in the project. That sounds like a lot of money, but it’s less than 0.1% of the total project cost of more than $1 billion. Bird-friendly glass wasn’t installed on the stadium and it became the single biggest bird-killing building in Minneapolis and made national headlines. Now the cost of retrofitting the stadium to add bird-friendly window films to its deadly glass? Somewhere around $10 million.

The cost of doing nothing

We also need to consider the high costs we incur without an ordinance.

The cost of doing nothing while birds die is significantly higher than a fractional increase to building project costs. In addition to their immeasurable aesthetic, ethical, and cultural value:

1. Birds provide essential and extremely valuable ecosystem services, such as insect/pest control, pollination, seed dispersal, and nutrient cycling that benefit everyone. Birds provide them for free, and if we lose them they cannot be replaced with technology. Learn more about this here.

2. Birdwatching is multi billion-dollar industry in the United States, through tourism income (including places like Wisconsin), equipment sales, guide books, and employment. Learn more here.

3. Birds offer significant mental and physical health benefits, which have become even more apparent during the pandemic. Seeing birds provides positive impacts of nature experience on cognitive functioning, emotional well-being, and physical activity involved with hiking and birdwatching. Learn more here.

4. Bird-window collisions are unpleasant and disturbing. People often report to us feeling saddened, sickened, disturbed, startled, and alarmed by witnessing birds hitting windows. When large windows are added in places intended for rest and quiet, such as a school library, they have the potential for creating the opposite effect.

Banner photo: University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Bakke Recreation & Wellness Center, a building that adheres to Madison’s Bird-safe Glass Ordinance requirements. Photo by Brenna Marsicek / SoWBA