Reducing avian mortality from noise barrier collisions along an urban roadway

摘要

Anthropogenic changes, including road network, have strongly influenced biodiversity of Europe. For the past 100 years road networks have become a conspicuous part of European landscape and strongly affected environment and human well-being, including effect by noise. To reduce impact of noise the special barriers (mainly transparent) are installed along a road. Annually thousands of birds die in collision with glass and acrylic screens, and these are important causes of avian mortality. Here we report about and describe how to prevent the lethal hazards that clear and acrylic (plastic) noise barriers along an urban road in eastern Poland pose to birds. A total of 114 fatal strikes representing 26 species were documented along transparent noise barriers. In unmodified sections in both study periods (2012/2013 and 2013/2014) we observed differences in number of fatalities between the seasons, the dead birds were found mostly in the summer, less in the spring and autumn and fewest in winter, but no differences were found between study periods (2012/2013 v. 2013/2014). These result we treat as base line or control data and compare them to experimental modification of the same barriers. After applying a film consisting of horizontal black thick stripes the number of fatal strikes decreased significantly. The average number of fatalities decreased from 1.02 to 0.06 ind./km for all panels of all sections combined and the number of species killed decreased from 19 in unmodified to 4 in modified sections. We highly recommend this effective and inexpensive application as a responsible public utility measure to protect bird life found near roads.