An interesting meeting this past Tuesday, October 21, for all Dungeness Nature Alliance volunteers and guests at the Dungeness Center about a movement named Lights Out Washington lead by the cooperative collaboration between DarkSky Olympic Peninsula and Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society local chapters.
We were encouraged to lower lighting during spring and fall migration to help millions of birds traversing our area each night. Lights confuse a bird’s sense of direction, or temporarily blind them resulting sometimes in their death if they run into a building, for example.
The lights also influence other living things, like humans. If we don’t get proper sleep time in darkness, our body can be impacted. It can distract bees, insects, bats, and butterflies from their lives as pollinators. Which impacts earth’s food supply.
There are cities in California like Santa Barbara which have adopted standards to darken their nights remarkably as we on the Olympic Peninsula are striving for, too.
You can watch the migration patterns in real time here.
