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Subject:

bird mortality from building collisions

From:

Evelyn Ralston

Reply-To:

Evelyn Ralston

Date:

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:03:29 -0500

An article on this topic was recently published in PLoS One (Public Library of Science; a peer-reviewed scientific journal). I bumped into it (no pun intended) by chance and thought it will interest, perhaps surprise, several on MDOsprey. Below are the abstract and a link to the full paper. If someone has difficulties getting it I have the PDF.

Happy new year to all and many birds in 2012 (I wouldn't mind a Snowy Owl myself…)

Evelyn Ralston
Bethesda MD


http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0024708

Collision Mortality Has No Discernible Effect on
Population Trends of North American Birds
Todd W. Arnold1*, Robert M. Zink2
1 Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, United States of America, 2 Bell Museum and Department of
Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
Abstract
Avian biodiversity is threatened by numerous anthropogenic factors and migratory species are especially at risk. Migrating
birds frequently collide with manmade structures and such losses are believed to represent the majority of anthropogenic
mortality for North American birds. However, estimates of total collision mortality range across several orders of magnitude
and effects on population dynamics remain unknown. Herein, we develop a novel method to assess relative vulnerability to
anthropogenic threats, which we demonstrate using 243,103 collision records from 188 species of eastern North American
landbirds. After correcting mortality estimates for variation attributable to population size and geographic overlap with
potential collision structures, we found that per capita vulnerability to collision with buildings and towers varied over more
than four orders of magnitude among species. Species that migrate long distances or at night were much more likely to be
killed by collisions than year-round residents or diurnal migrants. However, there was no correlation between relative
collision mortality and long-term population trends for these same species. Thus, although millions of North American birds
are killed annually by collisions with manmade structures, this source of mortality has no discernible effect on populations.
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