Ecology Ottawa, with several partners including Bird Friendly Ottawa, are calling on the City of Ottawa to obtain Bird-Friendly City status, a certification from Nature Canada. Please consider signing the petition to protect Ottawa's birds!
Birds play a vital role in Ottawa’s ecosystem by contributing to pollination, distributing seeds and maintaining ecosystem health. There are more than 180 bird species in the Ottawa area, with about 2 million individual birds nesting in our urban area and millions more migrating through the city annually.
Unfortunately, birds face a variety of threats in Ottawa. This includes free-roaming cats that catch birds at an alarming rate, untreated glass, excessive exterior lighting, pesticide use, and increasing loss of habitat from development, sprawl and clear cutting. Sadly, approximately 250,000 birds are killed in Ottawa annually from window collisions alone.
The City of Ottawa has made some commitments to protecting birds, including sustainable design practices and technologies to protect wildlife (Official Plan 4.6.4, 11.1), commitments to protect the City’s natural environment (Official Plan 4.8.1), and commitments to adopt an “ecosystem perspective” to facilitate a more harmonious relationship with wildlife (Wildlife Strategy). While the City adopted Bird-Safe Design Guidelines in 2022, they are merely guidelines and impose no obligation for their implementation.
The petition calls upon the City of Ottawa to:
To read more about Nature Canada's certification program, visit this link here. Scroll down on the page to find an interactive map that shows current cities that have been certified as Bird Friendly Cities (including Toronto, Barrie, Kitchener, Guelph, Sarnia and more!).
