Nature advocates behind a four-year effort to make Ottawa an officially “Bird Friendly City” are celebrating the achievement this spring, but also pushing for more ways to protect wildlife habitat and promote environmental sustainability.
Nature Canada announced May 5 that Ottawa and four other Canadian municipalities had earned certification as Bird Friendly Cities, becoming part of a network of 41 communities across the country that have qualified for the designation under criteria established by the Ottawa-based national conservation group.
The certification may seem like a stamp of approval for a specialized niche concern. But ensuring the wellbeing of bird populations, say proponents of the cause, can lead to a wide range of benefits that include higher crop yields, improved mental health, better road safety and smarter urban planning.
What’s more, they say, birds are a pleasure to listen to and watch — and the steps taken by municipalities to create safer spaces for them, including promotion of bird-friendly decals to prevent window collisions, educating cat owners about songbird predation and protecting the urban forest, are win-win propositions for avian populations and city residents alike.
“I just think birds are a very visible, pretty hook (to) get people into understanding, and then advocating, for all of this,” said Emilia Michaud of the Ottawa Field Naturalists’ Club. “You see these beautiful little fleeting birds that can be so mysterious.”
Birds can mitigate the need for pesticides by controlling the number of mosquitoes and crop-damaging insects like caterpillars. Birds help balance the ecosystem and — as various academic studies have shown — the sound of birdsong and the presence of birds around us increase feelings of wellbeing, reduce stress and anxiety.
The diversity of birds migrating through the Ottawa Valley using natural corridors, if maintained or expanded, could even help promote increased ecotourism, say advocates such as Deborah Doherty, co-chair of Bird Friendly Ottawa and one of the leaders of the campaign to qualify Ottawa for Nature Canada certification.
“It would be great to be a biophilic city,” said Doherty. “That’s the next level.”
The term “biophilia” originated in a 1973 book by German-American psychoanalyst Erich Fromm and captures the idea of humanity’s natural love for life. American naturalist Edward Wilson later popularized the word in his 1984 book Biophilia to highlight people’s tendency to seek connections with nature.
Rachel Buxton, a professor with Carleton University’s Institute of Environmental Science and Department of Biology — and one of the special advisers to Bird Friendly Ottawa — said humanity evolved in biodiverse environments that offered better protection and shelter.
“If there’s water and if there’s sounds of trees and many different species, that was a pretty good indicator of an environment where a lot of our needs could be met,” she said. “There’s water to drink, there’s potentially more animals to eat, and there’s tree cover, things to make shelter out of.”
Committing to a higher standard of protections for bird populations plays a significant role in sustaining a healthy environment for all species, added Buxton.
“Protecting bird habitat also protects key forest stands that sequester carbon and cool (our) cities, and then protecting birds and ensuring neighborhoods with higher bird diversity can also contribute to people’s health and wellbeing,” she said.
Doherty and Michaud both highlighted the calming aspects of birdsong and even taking a moment to identify it.
Listening to birds singing is “a de-stressor; just identifying birds is a de-stressor, because you’re focusing on the bird, on nature, and you’re not thinking about the things that are stressing you,” said Doherty.
Michaud, who’s retired, credited her interest and research in birding as beneficial to her psychological health and memory.
“It raises the awareness for people to just stop for a second and pay attention, look at the flitting bird, look at the cardinal singing, and you start to tune in with nature — and it’s beneficial from the human psyche point of view,” she said. “You’re engaged with nature much more, and then you start to engage a little bit more in knowledge.”
Curiosity leads to a quest for more information and understanding, she said, which in turn increases the value of what’s being studied. In the broader context, said Michaud, people are more aware and protective about protecting what they know and enjoy. In this context, more citizens are willing to advocate for the environment and better conservation practices.
“If you’re aware of the birds, if you’re aware of the pleasure you get out of them, then you also need to be aware of where they live, where they fly through, what they eat; a lot of the warblers that we have coming through (during migration season) are insectivores,” explained Michaud, adding that this kind of knowledge can discourage people from using pesticides and herbicides that harm birds and other creatures.
Ottawa’s recognition as a bird-friendly place also prompts people to have discussions about the issue, said Michaud. To get the city certified, Bird Friendly Ottawa — alongside Ecology Ottawa and other partners — worked since 2022 on educational awareness campaigns while advocating for city council to prioritize working towards certification, as a lack of municipal support was initially a barrier.
These awareness initiatives ranged from hosting a World Migratory Bird Day to bird-viewing events along the Ottawa River shoreline and social media posts explaining the threats posed to bird populations from cats, window strikes and light pollution.
Birds evolved to rely on plants native to where they nest and migrate, making the planting of native species integral to public education about the issue.
“If you want to have biodiversity across the board,” Michaud said, “you need to make sure you support and replant native species.”
In addition, birds are considered an indicator species, according to Buxton, because of the diversity of their diets. Therefore, creating a city that supports many different types of birds is a good indicator of an overall healthy ecosystem.
“One of the requirements for being a Bird Friendly City is that you have climate resiliency strategies, which we do in Ottawa, and it includes things like planting more trees,” Doherty explained. “The city is actually planting native plants and trees on their properties.”
Doherty characterized local citizen groups such as the Ottawa Wildflower Seeds Library and neighbourhood garden groups as part of a booming community of activists dedicated to planting trees and gardens and thus supporting birdlife.
“I think it’s approximately 200 gardeners that are actively involved with the city with the greening initiative,” said Doherty. “You’re seeing lots of uptake on that. They’re planting more trees in priority neighbourhoods and hot spots for shade.”
On the other hand, tiny forests with a ground canopy of understory plants would better serve smaller birds, Doherty said. That’s why she was critical of a City of Ottawa and NCC operation on May 15 that removed a number of trees and swaths of underbrush between the Chief William Commanda Bridge and Bayview Station during the cleanup of an abandoned homeless encampment.
It was an example, she said, of where “education is important. Have your biologists assess the site to ensure that you’re not destroying any nest during (spring) nesting season. It’s just a lack of awareness — they’re focusing on fixing one problem and they’re creating another.”
William van Geest, executive director of Ecology Ottawa, said the City of Ottawa in general has an “impoverished” and “anthropocentric” attitude towards nature, as symbolized by its human-centred, 2013 wildlife strategy in which the very concept of wildlife is limited to large mammals.
“It’s ludicrous to limit the definition of wildlife to large mammals (given our dependency on our insects, or birds, or anything in the water — this vast ecosystem,” he said.
Being recognized as a Bird Friendly City could be emboldening, van Geest said, because we’ve already come so far to get certified — and that sets a bar for further action.
When it comes to municipal approvals of residential and commercial development, he said, it could mean providing incentives to developers to incorporate bird-friendly designs into building projects.
Building codes are controlled by the province, meaning municipalities can only propose voluntary guidelines. Van Geest said he doubts bird-friendly building features are currently considered significant criteria in assessing development applications.
“I suspect bird-safe guidelines are not on the top of their list of what (city planners are) sharing with developers.” He added that “retrofitting for changes” after a flawed development is built “is so much more expensive than building it right the first time.”
Proponents say, though, that being certified bird-friendly could inform approaches to land use, such as promoting urban intensification rather than more suburban sprawl. Developing car-oriented suburbs beyond the Greenbelt, such as the controversial Tewin development in rural southeast Ottawa or the suburb expansions happening around Stittsville and south of Barrhaven, are destructive to bird and wildlife habitats and promote a commercial culture of parking lot-oriented big-box retail centres.
“We are improving on (curbing urban sprawl), but changing land-use policies is really tricky. We have a new zoning bylaw, as of February of this year, that will really help us reduce sprawl,” van Geest explained. “Unfortunately, the province is often exerting pressure on us to expand our urban boundary, and urban boundary expansions just means destruction of habitat.”
An urban environment with hard surfaces — concrete, asphalt and other impermeable materials — limits the overall diversity of birds but helps pest species such as pigeons and seagulls proliferate downtown. By comparison, a much wider variety of birds will be encountered along the Ottawa River or the Greenbelt.
The impacts are twofold, say nature advocates: a car-oriented city limits biodiversity, and also makes greenspaces where wildlife flourishes less accessible to those who don’t own a car, since undeveloped land gets farther and farther away as suburbs spread outward.
Alternatively, working towards a transit-oriented, “15-minute neighbourhood” model of urban planning — where all key community services are found within short distances for pedestrians and cyclists — helps increase biodiversity. These neighbourhoods have a smaller vehicular footprint, so citizens should be able to enjoy nature close at hand.
“If you live in a place with higher canopy cover and higher diversity of birds just around your house, you are more likely to report better mental health,” said Buxton, emphasizing that even passive awareness of the sound of birdsong is a benefit.
“It’s not a livable city if it’s just concrete and asphalt. We need the green spaces,” added Michaud. She recalled overhearing a chipping sparrow singing loudly over the traffic noise of Highway 417 near the University of Ottawa, working extra hard to be heard.
“In urban habitats, birds have actually had to increase the volume of their song because of noise.”
A key part of the Bird Friendly application to Nature Canada is an area called the Lac Deschênes-Ottawa River Important Birding Area, a 295 square-kilometre swath of land covering both sides of the Ottawa River between Fitzroy Provincial Park in the west and the Chaudière Dam downtown. The area includes the spot near the Chief William Commanda Bridge where trees and other vegetation were recently cleared.
Doherty said Birds Canada and the Ottawa Field Naturalist’s Club are also involved in seeking a special designation for Ottawa as a Key Biodiversity Area from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The riverfront zone is important for Chimney Swifts and Brant geese — a smaller cousin of the Canada goose that nests there — as well as for its diverse wildlife and flora. Doherty said its international designation as a KBA is a key step towards Ottawa’s global recognition as a biodiverse city.
“People from around the world, around the country, will come to our city to visit. That’s where I’d like to see it go,” she said, adding that a biodiverse and nature-friendly city can even attract people to choose Ottawa as a place to live.
Beyond the Greenbelt, in an effort to reduce deforestation, Andrea Sissons, a member of Rural Woodlands Ottawa, has advocated for the planning of rows of trees along rural roads rather than wood fencing to reduce the driving hazard of drifting snow. In June 2024, the city approved a “living snow fence” pilot project that incentivized landowners to allow rows of trees planted along property edges facing roadways.
Aside from limiting dangerous white-out driving conditions in the winter, they help replenish what’s been cut down and create corridors for birds to travel and nest in.
“For birds, these hedgerows and little patches of forest allow connectivity, it allows them to get to that next forest safely, because they can flitter down the hedgerow instead of having to fly across a 200-acre corn field,” Sissons said. “That, and it gives them refuge to possibly nest there. It encourages their presence, which means that they’re likely to deal with some of the pests that farmers have.”
During breeding season, birds need to feed their young a high volume of worms and caterpillars, which are otherwise damaging to crop yields.
“A lot of those caterpillars are defoliators, and they’re eating people’s crops or eating forest leaves. If we have enough birds that can eat them, then we don’t have to spray,” said Sissons, highlighting potential reductions in pesticide use.
However, the problem of deforestation and land use remains. Sissons pointed to woodlands being destroyed for the construction of solar farms, as well as farmers planting crops close to the road within the city’s right-of-way without penalty.
“I’d like to see the city support and recognize the importance of the rural forests and those hedgerows that get taken out all the time,” Sissons said. “Farmers will take out the trees and plant corn there, and the city doesn’t care.
In some areas, she added, the city has allowed applicants “to rip down a forest and put up solar panels. That’s not really a good way to do it.”
Sissons noted that in the United States, ways have been developed to build solar farms in ways that don’t obliterate potential wildlife habitat.
“If they plant native pollinator plants under the solar panels, then they can actually increase pollinator (and) bird habitat. So, it can be a win for the solar power, but also a bit of a win for the environment.”
‘It takes a fair amount of time for the policies to start having an effect, for that trickle down to occur, but we do have some good policies in place. If you like drinking water, if you like eating food, if you like breathing air, you will want to take care of nature. Nature is what takes care of us.’
— William van Geest, executive director, Ecology Ottawa
Sissons, like the others, said she hopes certification as a Bird Friendly City will prompt Ottawa to be more proactive about balancing competing priorities involving the environment.
Buxton emphasized that protection of older, existing habitats as a priority rather than restoration, which can take many years to mature enough to support bird habitats. This is particularly important given the fact that Ottawa is located along an important hemispheric bird migration route.
“We really are on a key flyway of birds that are trying to make their way from South America, Central America, all the way to the boreal forest, and we know that birds are facing stressors all along their habitat,” she said. “So all these (bird-friendly) efforts that are underway . . . I’d love to see continued pushing.”
Michaud said she feels optimistic now that Ottawa is officially bird-friendly, as it creates momentum and engenders a collaborative spirit between those working towards a better place to live.
“I think the journey is going to make everything better, including getting these organizations to work together much better than they have in the past,” she said, adding that municipal officials need to do the same. “The city needs to make sure that they don’t just engage (with neighbourhoods) to say they’ve done it, but to really listen and then work together on solving problems.”
Doherty emphasized that taking care of the birds is a challenge shared by all citizens.
“This is everyone’s responsibility. Take advantage of city programs like Trees in Trust or Plant Your Place. Join a community gardening group, count birds for citizen science. Help make this city better,” she said.
Van Geest said he’s pleased with Ottawa’s certification as a Bird Friendly City, but added there’s lots of room for improvement, whether through the development process or more broadly reforming the city’s human-centred, car-oriented attitude towards land use.
“It takes a fair amount of time for the policies to start having an effect, for that trickle down to occur, but we do have some good policies in place,” said van Geest. “If you like drinking water, if you like eating food, if you like breathing air, you will want to take care of nature. Nature is what takes care of us.”
