ABC's Model Bird-Friendly Building Ordinance

American Bird Conservancy (ABC) has created model, or ideal, legislative language, downloadable below, as a starting point for cities, villages, counties, states, universities, businesses — any entity interested in regulating new construction to reduce bird mortality from collisions with glass. They describe truly bird-friendly buildings.

Summarized simply, the guidelines are based on a 100/100/100 framework: 100% of all glass and other building materials should be bird friendly in the first 100 feet of 100% of buildings. The guidelines also specifically include making all hazardous features that cause collisions, no matter where they are found, bird friendly.

Any group that adopts this ordinance as written will be at the leading edge of creating a bird-friendly built environment. However, other stakeholders considering the guidelines may want to soften the language, to exempt certain types of buildings or to reduce the amount of bird-friendly glass required. To promote informed decisions, ABC has created a discussion of the issues most frequently debated when bird-friendly code is created. (See Creating Bird-friendly Legislation, elsewhere on this page.)

The guidelines are intended to be adopted as an ordinance to modify municipal building codes and are presented in that format. However, the text can be easily adapted to fit other building guidance formats.

ABC will revise these guidelines as new science, materials, techniques, and technologies become available, with the most recent version always available here.