Yesterday the guardian published an article regarding a new repot which ranks the deadliest cities in the US for birds, who often collide with glass-covered or illuminated buildings.

Obviously, every activist knows that birds have much bigger problems, but skyscrapers are very symbolic. They are a symbol of humans’ total occupation of the planet. Everything is theirs for the taking, even the sky.

The more familiar way of hurting birds, outside the food industry, hunting and as ornaments, is invading their habitats with airplanes. Around 15,000 crashes of airplanes into birds occur in the world every year. Humans violently invade the sky, and their solutions to the damage caused as a result of the crushes is using fireworks, cannons, guns and balloons, to scare away the birds.
Most of the strikes occur during daytime hours, between July and October. Canceling the daytime flights during these months is of course not an option humans even consider, but attaching spikes on the airport signs to make it harder for birds to flock, is, and so is chaining dogs in the airport next to the takeoff area in order to run the birds off, and even using falcons who humans set to nest in airports. The ingenuity as usual with humans is limitless.

Much less known, but much greater sky conquest, is the mentioned glass-covered and illuminated buildings. Up to one billion birds die in glass collisions every year in the US alone. Some birds navigate at night using celestial cues like stars and the moon. Experts suggest that these natural lights can be drowned out by the city center’s bright lights. This causes many birds to collide with buildings since they are attracted to or distracted by the buildings’ bright lights at night. Many migratory songbirds use calls during their flight for orientation and navigation. Mesmerized by the bright lights from the cities they make more flight calls, meaning that confused songbirds could be luring others into brightly lit urban areas and perhaps even directly into buildings. Even if the dazed birds don’t die in violent collisions, some circle the illuminated buildings and eventually die of exhaustion.

Birds who navigate during daytime on the other hand are confused by the buildings’ clear, reflective glass.

Birds don’t change their migratory paths just because humans build cities in their migratory corridors, and the result is the greatest sky invasion.
The corporate world wants the glass to look shiny and mirrored because that is a symbol of productivity and prosperity. And as usual with humans, nonhumans pay the price for their careless and violent desires and preferences. Nonhumans pay the price for humans’ taste, in food, in cloths, entertainment, and even architecture.

In a way, skyscrapers are to birds, what cars are for numerous land animals – ­assassin tools.

This report is a reminder of how this world is humans’ world in every possible aspect. This goes way beyond the food industry and it’s beyond veganism’s ability to handle. Human footprint is all over this planet. Everyone is hurt by them somehow. The problem with humans is everything.

Humans’ destructiveness is practically limitless. In countless everyday actions, humans cause suffering to nonhuman animals even half way around the world. Humans destroy everything they touch.

There is no such thing as “no man’s land”. And even that term is outstandingly speciesist as animals live everywhere. For them the whole world is an occupied territory.