CHICAGO — Chicago is the deadliest city in the U.S. for birds journeying each spring and autumn between northern locales and Florida, Mexico and Central America.
But the city has put off implementing a 2020 ordinance that would have given greater weight to bird protection measures on the list of criteria it uses to evaluate proposed new buildings. Planning officials say new standards will be released in early 2023 but provided no details. Advocates worry the measures will be toothless.
“We continue to not get a straight answer from them,” said Annette Prince, the head of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, a volunteer group that each migratory season rescues thousands of birds, most weighing only a few ounces, injured from striking downtown’s glass-walled buildings. “We get put off when we ask direct questions.”
