The Government Is Changing Tower Lights to Save the Birds

Flashing lights can be the difference between life and death for bicyclists, for kids getting off school buses, for first responders racing to the site of an crash—so why not the Pied-billed Grebe? Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration continued implementation of a new regulation that will change the steady, red lights that warn aircraft pilots of nearby radio, television, and telephone towers to blinking red ones. Researchers say birds are much less attracted to the flashing illumination—and that the change could save about 7 million avian lives a year.

Of course, even small-seeming federal changes don’t come easy. Groups like the American Bird Conservancy have been calling for lighting shifts since at least the late 1990s, citing estimates that 2 to 4 million songbirds die in collisions with communication towers each year. (A 2012 study put the death toll for American and Canadian birds much higher—at about 6.8 million birds annually.) In 2003, environmental organizations filed suit against the Federal Communications Commission to force them to the study the phenomenon, a case they eventually won.