Il est difficile de décider par où commencer, mais je pense que la meilleure façon de commencer est de dire que tout ce projet a commencé sur Instagram (je parie que vous n'entendez pas cela très souvent !)... Il y a environ un an, je faisais défiler ma page, aimant des posts à gauche et à droite comme nous le faisons tous, lorsque je suis tombée sur une publicité concernant un nouveau programme que la World Wildlife Fund (WWF) avait mis en place pour les étudiants universitaires/postsecondaires. L'annonce a attiré mon attention et je me suis dit : "Pourquoi ne pas aller voir ?" J'avais un peu de temps libre et quel mal cela pouvait-il faire ? L'annonce ressemblait un peu à ceci (voir ci-dessous) et j'ai pensé que cela pourrait être un excellent ajout à mon CV en pleine expansion, me permettant de m'impliquer davantage dans ma communauté universitaire. J'ai regardé le contenu, j'ai décidé "Hé, je peux le faire !" et je me suis inscri...

It’s hard to decide where to begin, but I think the best way to start is by saying that this whole project began on Instagram (I bet you don’t hear that very often!)… About a year ago I was scrolling through my page, liking posts left and right as we all do, when I came across an advertisement about a new program that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) had put out for university/post-secondary students. It caught my eye and I decided “Why not check it out?”, I had some spare time on my hands and what harm could it do? The ad looked a little something like this (see below) and I thought it might be a great addition to my growing resume; allowing me to get further involved in my university community. I looked through the contents, decided “Hey, I can do this!” and signed up right away. When my friends heard about this new initiative, they asked questions like “Why would you do this, it has nothing to do with your program or future career?”, and to that I say: why the heck not? The Living Pla...

I don't think that I need to convince you that birds hitting windows and dying is a bad thing. Bird collisions with buildings is right at the top of the list of bird fatalities ( along with cats ), and with the huge decline of migratory birds in recent years, it makes sense that large institutions do what they can to help reduce collisions. So here is the first problem. There are no vertical transparent surfaces in nature, thus birds are completely unaware that they are about to hit a window. Birds are often confused because they see the reflection of a tree in the window and try to land on the tree. University campuses are usually covered in windows (modern buildings tend to have lots of windows to let in natural light and convey transparency... also they look cool). And, university campuses have a lot of trees. So mix these two things together and you get a lot of reflected trees causing bird collisions. The second problem has to do with the solutions, in that they are expensive....