Vikings stadium kills hundreds of birds per year
A friend of mine back in MN shared this article on Facebook this morning:
US Bank Stadium is a Bird Killing Machine
As a bird lover this makes me so angry! A giant glass building killing birds by flying into it, you don't say!! Stupid fucking morons. Not sure which part makes me angrier actually--this, or the fact that they made MN taxpayers pay for it. They kept begging for it for years and years and finally got it, never mind that there was nothing wrong with the Metrodome (other than the roof collapsing on occasion anyway) in the first place. Let the teams pay for their own damn stadiums, and prove they deserve it by winning something once in a while! Just one more reason to hate the NFL and the Vikings.
But I guess sportsball entertainment is more important than the environment and wildlife they are disrupting.
I don't know if there's anything we can do about it either, except hope that they do the right thing and put the less-reflective coating on it. Rant over.
Comments
Yep!
The god awful Wilf Brothers and the State were told that this wretched building would be a problem, but they couldn't be bothered to spend a little more to help birds.
But hey, we have Superbowel 2018.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
I hear you Daenerys.
There are some simple and affordable solutions.
But, I guess there also has to be the impulse in America to revere birds as much as sports. Thank you for this essay.
I have hanging outside, a CD
in front of the two windows birds have crashed into, because they saw the landscape reflected in the glass.
It has been very effective, and not at all visually unattractive. They sway in the breeze, and do interesting things with the light, which also warns the birds.
The new Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta will probably
have the same result. It has a retractable glass roof with one wall glass as well to give a view of the city.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
birds are cool and all, but realistically 400/year is a
drop in the bucket. far more than 400 birds per year are probably killed by people driving to and from games at the stadium. as a seat-of-the-pants nearly-worst-case scenario, americans drive about 3.3 million million miles per year, and might kill 330 million birds while doing it (one estimate ranges from 90 - 340 million). That's 100 dead birds for every million miles traveled. If (pulled from a hat statistic) 10,000 vehicles drive an average of 10 miles each way to an average game, that's 200,000 miles per game -- or 20 birds.
it's quite possible that the pet felines of the readers of this blog kill, in toto, more than 400 birds per year. numbers from one study can be interpolated to suggest that a cat allowed outdoors for about 4 hours per day will kill 10 or more birds per year.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Can we NOT start the cat-bashing, please?
Got enough of that on That Other Place, which had at least one resident cat-hater who used to spout that kind of stuff.
There are better reasons for keeping your cat(s) indoors, if they'll stand for it, including safety from cars, coyotes, dogs, other cats, careless neighbors, and cat-haters.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
+1 The Other Maven!
And cats are what they are. They evolved that way. As you point out, there are many reasons humans should keep their cats indoors:
Sports stadiums, solar thermal power plants, and other human-created bird killers are made by human choice. We can (and should) choose to limit the damage they do. The choices exist. We should choose them.
We've become far too addicted to the steel-and-glass post-modern architectural model anyway.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
cats eat birds.
that's a simple fact. a LOT of birds. far more birds than are killed flying into all of the windows in all of the structures in the United States.
the cats owned by the people who attend those games probably kill tens of thousands of birds per year. the point is simply this: getting all upset -- and suggesting, for example, that money should be spent to mitigate the toll -- is absurd. people like beautiful glass buildings. people like cats. unless one is prepared to spend a long ton of money to prevent cats from killing birds, one is not being very reasonable getting upset about 20,000 birds that might be killed over the lifetime of this building, during which pet cats will kill a few billion birds, and feral cats will kill many billions of birds. i don't see how these simple statements of fact amount to 'cat-bashing'.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
It's always cats vs. birds
and never, or hardly ever, cats vs. mice, voles, moles, shrews, squirrels, you name it - even though cats catch a lot more of those. Yes, they hunt; yes, they're obligate carnivores; but nobody gives a damn about the mice, voles, moles, shrews, etc. Just, always, only, birds.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
won't somebody think of the rodents?!??!?!!!!
Again, I'm not intending to pick on cats, I'm just pointing out a simple reality of the mathematics of untimely bird death. I expect that most people who give it serious thought will conclude that the benefit of cats' predation of destructive vermin outweighs the emotional bummer of their predation of birds. If they'd sink their teeth into those pestilential damned pigeons, it would be the ultimate win-win.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
All very true, however
the article says they found 60 dead birds in ONE day. I don't know how often they're counting, but even at once a month 60x12=720. I think they are lowballing the numbers to make it sound less bad.
Also I agree that pet cats should be kept indoors, for the same reasons as Maven stated. Can't do anything about the ferals though; cats gotta eat too.
But this man-made structure that confuses them, if they can mitigate it in the cheapest, most logical way then they should, obviously. That's IF they choose to. IF.
This shit is bananas.
This Mojave Desert solar plant kills 6,000 birds a year.
Here's why that won't change any time soon
and that fucking border wall is an environmental disaster. Already! It is the Holocene extinction in action. In California everything is being destroyed nothing is natural, everything "managed" to death's door. And everyone wants to be here apparently, the gold rush destruction was nothin' compared to the lobbyists out in Wall Street West. The current speculators are driving everything over the edge. Just kill me now why not. (glances up at the Camejo for Governor button from '02 Vote Green! lol because those were the good old days). /witness
Thanks for this essay, and the comments. Peace.