Who Turns Out the Lights?
Author: Jim Cubie, J.D. fn.1
Every light in the building must be turned off. If one of two storefronts on the street are still lit, or one story is still lit, the birds will be attracted to it, hit it and die. Attraction is the basic premise of the Lights Out Program.
Who will make sure all the lights are off every night? Is it the absentee owner, the manager, the renter, franchisor or an employee who decides? Because of complex ownership patterns of buildings and conflicting laws effective light management will be nearly impossible. Farm conservation programs have been thwarted by just the same barriers. The author was Chief Counsel of the Senate Agriculture Committee responsible for farm conservation programs.
The barriers that will prevent the Lights Out program from working are:
- The ownership, control and management of lights is so complex it defies solution.
- Even when building owners or landowners can save significant amounts of money by changing a conservation practice, they do not change the practice for several reasons.
- Average commercial leases are 3-5 years. Buildings change hands every 5-10 years. Thus, the program will lose 1/5 to 1/8 of its participants every year. They will have to be re-recruited or replaced by other building owners or lessors.
- The very large number of agencies in a metro area make an effective policy impossible
- The experience with other conservation programs which have been thwarted by the same barriers show they will also block an effective Lights Out program.
- Better successful options save more birds – Lights Out save very few or none.
Complexity Of Ownership, Management, And Control Of Lights. First, many properties are owned by absentee owners who are not motivated to address local avian conservation problems. Second, the buildings are typically managed by a manager whose imperative is to maintain the income stream so that the owner can pay his mortgage and reap his profits. He will not risk the loss of income — and his management contract – by insisting that any tenant turn off his lights. A brightly lit building is perceived as attractive to potential lessors. Even if a tenant is willing to turn his lights off, the building owner or the tenant’s franchise contract may prevent him from doing so. Finally, the decision to flip the switch is made by people who are only marginally controlled by the manager. These include janitorial personnel and cleaning crews which typically need lights in the evening to perform their tasks
The Sign-up Treadmill The average commercial lease is for 3-5 years and ownership changes every 15-10 years. When these changes occur, the new lessor or owner will not be bound by any pledges made previously to reduce lighting. Thus, annually the program will lose about 1/5th- 1/8th of its participants. They will have to be re-recruited or replaced.
Numerous Local Governments Control Lights. It will be impossible to use governmental authority to reduce lights in a metropolitan area to any extent because there are typically so many different entities that control lights. These entities have their own priorities which preclude reducing lighting. For instance, in the Chicago area there are 285 municipalities and 7 counties which will have to be convinced to reduce lighting to make any significant difference in ambient light levels. Also, a city may not control the lighting of highways and airports and other entities. Reducing lighting levels will also be resisted by local police retailers and others.
Examples Farm Conservation Failures
Example: Clean Water Cleanup Thwarted by Ownership Patterns Major reductions in fertilizer levels are needed to clean-up water pollution. The reductions have been recommended by agronomic experts for decades and provide real savings to farmers. However, they are not adopted for the same reasons that the Light Outs will fail in urban areas, As in urban areas, a large percentage of farmland is owned by absentee owners. Active farmers rent this land and rely on it for income. A farmer who deviates from standard (too high) fertilizer levels and reduces profits to the absentee owners will lose their ability to farm that land.
Example: Wetland and Species Reintroduction Thwarted by Jurisdictional conflicts. Even if a farmer is willing to manage his drainage to protect wetlands, there are local drainage boards which can and often do overrule him. A second example is the attempt to reintroduce the black-footed ferret. There must be large prairie dog colonies for it to survive. Attempts to establish these colonies have been thwarted by local laws which consider prairie dogs a nuisance.
Same Barriers Stop Lights Out from Working. The same barriers that have thwarted farm conservation programs will prevent Lights Out from working. Undertaking the huge Lights Out effort in the face of these barriers is a major error.
Better Options
There are far better options to reduce avian deaths, for example bird-safe building codes for new buildings. The cost of bird-safe construction to builders is extremely low—under 4/10ths of 1 per cent. Toronto has already built 1,000 buildings under its bird-safe building ordinance. There at 21 municipalities in the U.S, including NYC with have such codes.
If the Chicago bird-safe building code were implemented for one year it would save 139,000 birds — 100 times greater than the number of birds who died at the Science Center in the widely publicized recent incident. (about 1,000)
Fn 1. Jim Cubie, J.D. Member of the Supreme Court Bar, and the Bars of the District of Columbia, and Maryland B (inactive.) Developed energy and environmental policy for a presidential primary campaign. In the U.S. Senate he was responsible for evaluating and recommending budget levels for the EPA and NSF budgets for four budget cycles. He also served as Chief Counsel of the Senate Agriculture Committee where he oversaw all agricultural conservation programs. He supervised the reorganization of the USDA, and specifically the conservation programs. He designed and secured funding for the Wetland Reserve Program, the largest wetland restoration program in U.S. history (over 3 million acres.) The Natural Resources Conservation Association, the umbrella organization of all conservation organizations, honored him for his work on the farm bill.
He has been an advocate for native plant protection- leading the development of landscape plans for new homes using only native cultivars. https://ornithologycenter.com/nativeplantsolutions/ He designed a program in which entire tract home developments can be landscaped with native cultivars at no additional cost to the builder. The homes include bird safe windows. He has also authored two reports on the economic cost of bird-safe glass in new construction and replacement windows. The added cost in new construction is less than four tenths of one percent. https://ornithologycenter.com/bird-building-window-collision-prevention-resource-center/