Avian Hazards

While the new Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment has many modern and environmentally sound features to recommend it, I was dismayed upon seeing the photos in PAW, which show a multistory avian deathtrap (feature, Dec. 2). In this day and age, erecting a glass structure reflecting the natural world without thought to the hundreds or thousands of bird deaths this will cause over the years as they try to fly “through” the glass shows a callous disregard for nature. Bird-friendly architecture is part of current LEED green building certification guidelines, and one would have hoped that a center dedicated specifically to energy and the environment would have taken these guidelines into consideration before building a structure that will contribute to the hundreds of millions of birds killed every year by man-made structures, especially glass windows and buildings. For more information on this devastating topic, please visit the American Bird Conservancy at http://collisions.abcbirds.org/collisions.html.

I’m hoping that perhaps the architects will think to retrofit their glass structure and save birds from untimely human-caused deaths. How ironic that the main article was titled “Where Collisions Are Key.”