As housing development moves further away from cities into rural areas, wildlife– including birds– find themselves living in places with more lights and noise.
Researchers at Cal Poly want to understand how this affects birds, and they’ve received a nearly $900,000 grant to help fund their study.
KCBX’s Amanda Wernik spoke with Clint Francis, a biology professor at Cal Poly who’s leading the research.
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A lot of research shows that light and noise affect birds, especially migrating birds; what are some of the consequences that we already understand?
Noise pollution can change a lot of their behavior– their ability to detect predators, their song, their ability to hear one another and even reproductive success. We see some of the same impacts with light pollution, including disrupting their sleep.
How do you hope to further our understanding, and what specifically does your research focus on?
We're trying to understand whether aspects of human activity like noise and light pollution have the same kind of effects across bird species. Do they foretell problematic consequences that could lead to population declines?
What do you hope the real world or practical applications of your research will be?
I think it gives us some ways that we can improve the daily lives of animals, like decreasing the amount of light pollution that we emit from homes all the way up to cities, or finding creative solutions for reducing sound levels.
Are there things people can do now to minimize the impacts of light and noise on birds in our region?
Yeah, there's a lot of things that we can do here in San Luis Obispo; one of those includes reducing unnecessary lighting on your property or exterior lighting on buildings. People should think twice about whether they really need those, because a lot of the birds that may be living around there are exposed to that light and suffer all kinds of consequences.
