Birds’ life cycles are disrupted by bright city lamps
Street lights in cities and rural areas are causing significant habitat damage to birds, disrupting their life cycles, food availability, and reproductive cycles. Mithila Wildlife Trust Chairman Dev Narayan Mandal warns that streetlights are causing a decline in bird habitats, disrupting their sleep, foraging, reproduction, and migration patterns. Bird species often use star or moon light, but artificial streetlights can lead them to the wrong path, potentially causing failure and even death. Streetlight illumination attracts birds, but also attracts predatory animals, affects mating, and causes exhaustion or collisions, leading to injury or death.
Suresh Sharma warns that the installation of bright lights, noise, smoke, soil pollution, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides is threatening the survival of birds and causing mental stress. Environmental activist Sharma advocates for harmonized efforts among local, provincial, and federal governments to conserve birds, promoting low-intensity lights, traditional house construction, and artificial nest creation programs. Mandal, the chairman of the Mithila Wildlife Trust, added that encouraging organic farming can assist ensure that birds have access to food. He went on to say that organic farming should be promoted because the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers has increased avian death. He also emphasized the necessity of stringent legislative measures to stop bird hunting.
