Law and Order: Special Avian Victims Unit (Or, the Problem With Windows)

Should Law and Order ever run out of plot lines, its creative team could look to Toronto for an idea. A legal first is playing out in Blue Jay Town, and fittingly, the victims are birds. Several companies have been prosecuted with “discharging a contaminant during the years 2008 and 2009,” which has, or could have had, a role in harming animals—in this case, feathered flying ones. What could this toxic substance possibly be? Bleach to clean the sidewalks? Fertilizer in the planters?...Try sunlight.

 

The defendents—Menkes Consilium, Inc. and several sister companies—occupy a three-tower complex with heavily windowed facades in Toronto. The glass reflects trees and sky, effectively tricking birds into thinking they’re flying into friendly habitat. Instead, they encounter the buildings’ hard surfaces, knocking themselves out, sometimes fatally.

 

Two of the towers are the most lethal structures in Toronto to birds, according to FLAP (Fatal Light Awareness Program), a bird advocacy group based in that city. “[They] are essentially mirrors,” said Albert Koehl a staff lawyer for Ecojustice, which is pursuing the suit, in a recent interview. At least 7,000 injured birds have been collected from those sites over the past decade, revealed by data collected from FLAP. Of species recovered, some of the most common have been ruby-throated hummingbirds and dark-eyed juncos, among others.

 

Invoking Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act, Ecojustice has prosecuted the companies for releasing a harmful contaminant in the form of radiation, which the organization says encompasses the light bouncing off the windows at Menkes Consilium Place. It’s an unprecedented approach to addressing a major environmental problem—indeed, bird collisions with buildings are the second biggest manmade threat to birds after habitat loss, according to Daniel Klem, an ornithologist at Muhlenberg College who has studied bird strikes extensively. The companies are also charged under the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act for causing avian distress. The hearing is set for some time in April.

 

Though Ecojustice’s Koehl hopes that the defendants will take steps to rectify the problem, he also sees the case as a chance to send a broader message that such carnage won’t be tolerated—and if it continues, other building owners and managers could face the stand.

 

“I suppose people in cities think, ‘What do we have to do with migratory birds?’” muses Koehl, “but in fact buildings are one of the biggest hazards to migratory birds,” he says. And if the birds aren’t talking, at least someone will.