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Study to look at how bird friendly new Hastings bridge is

With reports that migratory birds are hitting the new Hastings bridge, a study hopes to provide insight.

May 12, 2014 at 7:57AM
The new bridge that spans the Mississippi River at Hastings opened in November 2013.
Bridges, along with other man-made structures, pose a threat to birds. Migratory birds have crashed into the Hastings bridge. (Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Sure, Mark Mar­tell had heard of birds crash­ing into man-made struc­tures, such as sky­scrap­ers, wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion towers and wind tur­bines — of­ten fa­tal­ly.

But bridg­es?

"It might just be some­thing about the height of the bridge, but I don't know," said Mar­tell, di­rec­tor of bird con­ser­va­tion for Audubon Minnesota, af­ter hear­ing re­ports that mi­gra­tory birds were fly­ing into the new Hwy. 61 Hastings bridge or be­com­ing en­tan­gled in the cables hold­ing up the $130 mil­lion span that con­nects the his­tor­ic river town to Washington County. But while en­vir­on­ment­al­ists and bird ex­perts have spent years study­ing how build­ings in ur­ban areas came to be such pro­lif­ic bird kill­ers, little such re­search has been done on bridg­es, Mar­tell said.

He hopes a new study, com­mis­sioned by the state Department of Transportation, will change that.

The study will be con­ducted amid con­cerns that birds fly­ing back from their win­ter­ing grounds in Central and South America may be killed or injured by fly­ing into the bridge, which cross­es the avi­an ex­press­way that is the Mis­sis­sip­pi River.

More than 300 spe­cies of birds — "mil­lions, if not bil­lions" — fly along the riv­er to and from their win­ter­ing grounds, said the park serv­ice's Paul Labovitz, who serves as super­in­tend­ent of the Mis­sis­sip­pi River National River and Rec­re­a­tion Area.

"I watched a flight of peli­cans one sum­mer day fly­ing over that took 15 min­utes to pass over me," Labovitz said last week. "So the num­bers are stag­ger­ing."

MnDOT of­fi­cials plan to hire an en­vi­ron­men­tal firm to study what makes bridg­es a threat to birds, which they hope will serve as a tem­plate for get­ting ar­chi­tects to buy into bird-friend­ly de­signs in the fu­ture.

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"At least in the case of build­ings, we know that there are some things that can be done to re­duce it," Martell said.

Mar­tell point­ed out that the National Park Service had signed off on the 545-foot tied-arch bridge — of­fi­cials re­ject­ed a cable-stayed de­sign in part be­cause it might pose a threat to mi­grat­ing birds, he said — on the con­di­tion that MnDOT under­take an­oth­er study to bet­ter under­stand the prob­lem of bird strikes on bridg­es.

The study could cost up to $100,000, Mar­tell said.

"The bot­tom line is we just don't know very much about it, so this parks serv­ice study is some­thing that in­ter­ests us and many oth­ers," Mar­tell said.

A MnDOT spokes­wom­an did not re­turn calls for com­ment.

"It's a con­ver­sa­tion that's been going for ac­tu­al­ly a cou­ple of years, but we're get­ting to the point where we're ac­tu­al­ly try­ing to frame what the study's going to be," Labovitz said.

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"We didn't have the in­for­ma­tion to in­form this par­tic­u­lar bridge de­sign," Labovitz said," but we were hop­ing that this in­for­ma­tion would in­form fu­ture pro­jects."

Audubon Minnesota has part­nered with the Building Own­ers and Man­ag­ers Association (BOMA), a trade group whose mem­bers rep­re­sent many high-rise build­ings in the met­ro area, on a program called "Lights Out" that en­cour­ag­es build­ing own­ers to re­duce light­ing dur­ing spring and fall mi­gra­tions "in an ef­fort to re­duce build­ing strikes." So far, of­fi­cials said, the program has en­listed near­ly 60 tall build­ings, in­clud­ing the Wells Fargo Center and the IDS Center.

Some­thing sim­i­lar should be tried on the Hastings bridge, Mar­tell sug­gest­ed, whose lights could be dim­med to avoid con­fus­ing night-mi­grat­ing birds, who navi­gate using the moon and stars and are of­ten at­tract­ed by the glow of light­ing from build­ings.

The U.S. Fish & Wild­life Service es­ti­mates that at least 97 mil­lion and as many as 976 mil­lion birds are killed an­nu­al­ly in the Unit­ed States when they crash into build­ings. There are no fig­ures yet on the num­ber of birds killed when they fly into oth­er man-made struc­tures.

He con­tinued: "You have to won­der in 2014 why we don't know more about this top­ic."

Libor Jany • 651-925-5033

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Twitter:@StribJany

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about the writer

about the writer

Libor Jany

Reporter

Libor Jany is the Minneapolis crime reporter for the Star Tribune. He joined the newspaper in 2013, after stints in newsrooms in Connecticut, New Jersey, California and Mississippi. He spent his first year working out of the paper's Washington County bureau, focusing on transportation and education issues, before moving to the Dakota County team.

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