"Creating Bird-Friendly Cities and Communities" with author Tim Beatley
National Conservation Training Center Public Lecture: May 15, 2025 at 7:00 pm - Byrd Auditorium
The NCTC Conservation Lectures are free and open to the public, all are welcome.
This lecture will be recorded and available online May 22 at 2:00 pm ET https://www.youtube.com/@usfws/streams
As the world has become more urban, noisier from increased traffic, and brighter from streetlights and office buildings, it has also become more dangerous for countless species of birds. Warblers become disoriented by nighttime lights and collide with buildings. Ground-feeding sparrows fall prey to feral cats. Hawks and other birds-of-prey are sickened by rat poison. These name just a few of the myriad hazards. How do our cities need to change in order to reduce the threats, often created unintentionally, that have resulted in nearly three billion birds lost in North America alone since the 1970s?
In The Bird-Friendly City, Timothy Beatley, a longtime advocate for intertwining the built and natural environments, takes readers on a global tour of cities that are reinventing the status quo with birds in mind. Efforts span a fascinating breadth of approaches: public education, urban planning and design, habitat restoration, architecture, art, civil disobedience, and more. Beatley shares empowering examples, including: advocates for “catios,” enclosed outdoor spaces that allow cats to enjoy backyards without being able to catch birds; a public relations campaign for vultures; and innovations in building design that balance aesthetics with preventing bird strikes.
Through these changes and the others Beatley describes, it is possible to make our urban environments more welcoming to many bird species. Whether birds are migrating and need a temporary shelter or are taking up permanent residence in a backyard, when the environment is safer for birds, humans are happier as well.
Timothy Beatley, PhD, is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities, in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for the last twenty-nine years. Beatley is the author or co-author of more than fifteen books. He directs the Biophilic Cities Project at UVA and is co-founder of UVA’s Center for Design and Health, within the School of Architecture.