Yay, Murka! Nearly $1 Billion In Tax Money For Vikings Stadium - A Death Trap For Birds
The US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, which opened last June and cost more than $1bn of mostly taxpayer money, is beautiful, large, glassy – and deadly to birds. A new report from a trio of conservation groups reveals that – for wildlife, at least – vast swathes of the new home of the Minnesota Vikings are indistinguishable from the sky and birds are being killed by flying straight into the stadium’s 200,000 sq ft of gleaming, clear glass. As CityPages, a local Twin Cities newspaper, put it: “Creatures crash into it like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.”
Over an 11-week period in the autumn, bird enthusiasts undertook regular circuits of the stadium, and discovered 60 dead birds, and another 14 stunned from flying into the glass. The report said that would project to at least 360 deaths over a three-year period, but that number “significantly underestimates true mortality at the stadium complex, because it does not include birds removed by maintenance staff, security guards, and scavengers.”
In 2014, the Audubon Society predicted that the stadium’s distinctive clear glass would prove to be a “death trap” for Minnesota’s local and migratory birds. The society pushed authorities to introduce changes so the birds could distinguish between the stadium and the sky. “We know the people of Minnesota do not want their money killing birds,” the society said.
But the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority, which owns the stadium, declined to take any steps, such such as installing glass with a visible pattern, as happened at the Javits Center in Manhattan. The Javits changes quickly led a 90% decrease in bird collisions.
EDIT
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/feb/28/minnesota-vikings-stadium-deadly-birds-glass
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