Birds, Buildings, People: Are Birdsafe Guidelines Enough?

This Major Paper considers songbird conservation in the City of Toronto as it is implemented through the fulfillment of bird-safe guidelines in the Toronto Green Standard. It explores how concerns about the issue of bird-glass collisions affect development decisions that shape the built environment, which affects songbird mortality, using the theoretical framework of political ecology. Research was conducted by surveying a random sampling of buildings and interviewing city planners, and was oriented towards understanding the interplay between birds, buildings, and people in order to find ways of making the city safer for songbirds.