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Glass walls may be bird killers
(eastday.com)
Updated: 2004-06-29 09:51

Reflective glass walls may be a threat to birdlife, experts warned yesterday.

They suggested the government control the use of glass walls on high-rise buildings, especially in areas on the routes of migratory birds.

They said flying birds could mistake the walls for the sky and crash into them.

"Glass walls will reflect light and make themselves lighter than other surrounding objects. Because of their phototaxis, birds will fly directly toward them," said Tang Sixian, a bird specialist from East China Normal University.

"Moreover, as the transparent glass walls reflect the blue sky and white cloud sometimes, the birds, thinking they are flying in the sky, will crash into them heavily. The result is that many birds die from the impact."

Tang said he has seen dozens of dead birds at the bottom of the terminal building of Pudong International Airport.

He speculated the birds died from impact because the building was covered with glass walls.

"Shanghai is in the middle of the birds' migration route from Siberia to Australia and the airport is just on the route," Tang said. "To protect the birds, glass walls should be controlled on the buildings along the route."

The airport management denied the glass walls have caused danger to migratory birds.

"We have never seen any bird bump into the glass walls," said Su Weiwei, a spokeswoman for the airport management company. "It is possible that the corpses seen by the expert were birds that were driven off by the staff to guarantee aircraft safety."

According to statistics, about a million birds die from crashing into skyscrapers in the United States every year.

The problem is not so serious in Shanghai because birds are not so numerous in the urban area.

"We never see dead birds at the bottom of our building and never hear about such cases," said a staffer at Shanghai Honglun Property Management Co Ltd, which manages an office building in Jing'an District.

But Tang Shimin, a teacher at Fudan University, said students sometimes pick up dead birds without obvious wounds under the buildings on campus. Experts suggest precautions are necessary because Shanghai plans to become an ecological city.



 
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