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Welcome To Bird City Wisconsin |
"Making our communities healthy for birds...and people"
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"Swift Night Out" is approaching.
Check out our new PROTECTING resource page to learn how you and
your community can get make a difference. Click the Chimney Swift (left) to link. |
| Application Process is now under way!!! |
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Our Mission Healthy communities are not just an assemblage of people. They are the sum of many parts, including birds. Bird City Wisconsin seeks to mobilize a statewide coalition of citizens and public officials who already know that birds are more than beautiful -- they are significant. Municipal governments can educate others and implement sound conservation practices. Bird City Wisconsin offers highly visible public recognition to those communities that succeed in doing so. Together, we can make a difference!
Our Message |
Video/slide show shows how you can be a Bird City
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If you’re one of the 60 percent of Americans who lives in an urban neighborhood, enjoying nature often means watching birds. Urban dwellers may frequently encounter Canada Geese, Ring-billed Gulls, and Mourning Doves, but if they look up in the right places they can also spot Common Nighthawks circling above buildings, Red-tailed Hawks hunting from treetops, and Blue Jays sounding the alarm.
A coalition led by the Milwaukee Audubon
Society, the Wisconsin Bird Conservation Initiative and the Wisconsin
Society for Ornithology wants to ensure that Wisconsin’s city folk
maintain healthy populations of birds and grow an appreciation for them.
They’re developing a new community recognition program: Bird City
Wisconsin, which will be modeled on the successful nationwide program
Tree City USA, a community improvement project sponsored by the Arbor
Day Foundation.
Wisconsin communities that come together to help protect birds – choosing from an array of different bird conservation activities – can receive designation and public recognition as a Bird City Wisconsin.
With funding from TogetherGreen, an alliance between the National Audubon Society and Toyota, the program will address an increasing problem: the decline of urban bird populations. Chimney Swift populations in Wisconsin, for example, have declined by more than 2% annually for the last 28 years, while the Purple Martin – which nests in colonial boxes often near water – is declining at three times that rate.
Bird City Wisconsin participants can learn how to:
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Protect and manage greenspace
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Landscape with native plants in backyards and parks
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Adopt architecture and lighting systems that reduce collisions
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Make their community hospitable to breeding, wintering, and migrating birds that seek safe places to spend time and find food.
Criteria for Becoming a Bird City
Application Process
History with our Partners
Urgent Goals
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