ilani hotel’s bright lights a bad path for birds flying to Clark County bird sanctuaries

But bright lights in the sky at night, when the vast majority of migrating birds travel, can render the destination unreachable. You know how brilliant lights on the highway can blind you? The effect of bright light upon birds is different but just as dangerous: It disorients, draws in and traps them, putting them at risk of exhaustion and death.

A row of exterior, upturned lights is tucked into the landscaping on the east side of the ilani hotel. The lights shine onto the hotel and directly into the sky, adding light pollution known as skyglow to the natural darkness that birds need to get where they’re going.

Hotel neighbors and organizations including the Refuge Friends and Vancouver Audubon say they have been questioning and complaining about those lights since the hotel opened and the lights went on in 2023, if not before.

“Was the intent to light up the sky? Because that’s what they’re doing,” said Jennifer Johnson, who lives about a mile to the east.

“They are very bright at night,” said Johnson’s husband, Roy McCormick. “They look like spotlights. They are very white on the ground but if it’s cloudy at night you see a weird blue circle.”

Peak migration in Clark County is usually mid-September through mid-October and mid-April through mid-May, said Susan Saul, conservation director at Vancouver Audubon.

“Any facility in Clark County shining lights into the sky poses a hazard for birds,” said Susan Saul, conservation director at Vancouver Audubon. “Even if they only turned off the outdoor lights during peak migrations — that would help.”

Management at ilani recently promised to replace the hotel’s undimmable exterior lights bulbs with new ones that will be dimmed overnight.

“We have heard the community’s concern regarding the hotel lighting and its potential impact on bird populations,” Kara Fox-LaRose, ilani president and general manager, said in an emailed statement via marketing firm Finn Partners last week. “We have found a resolution and have the necessary parts ordered that will allow us to dim the uplighting as the original lights did not offer this feature. Our goal with the light adjustment is to dim the exterior lights entirely and keep them dimmed throughout the evening.”

McCormick and Johnson said they are relieved to hear that — but also wary. Until last month, their outreach to ilani management and to every member of the Cowlitz tribal council had received “corporate cookie-cutter” replies, Johnson said. Meanwhile, the exterior hotel lights kept shining directly upwards into the sky, every night, all year long.

“It’s a bad image” for a tribe that purports to care about wildlife and ecology, said McCormick, a birder and amateur astronomer since he was a kid.

It wasn’t until a Columbian reporter reached out to ilani and the tribe in June that Fox-LaRose promised the lighting change. Though, the timetable for making the change hasn’t been set, she said.

Flyway

Communicating through Alison Attebery of Finn Partners, Fox-LaRose said Parametrix, a risk-assessment consultant, had studied the potential issue of the hotel’s impacts on birds before it was built, and concluded that risk to bird life was negligible.

Fox-LaRose declined to share Parametrix’ report with The Columbian but said it had resulted in the hotel being sited “more than 1,000 feet from attractive habitats and away from corridors running between habitats.”

Zeiner disagrees with that conclusion. Migratory birds’ extraordinary journey — some coming and going all the way from and to South America — certainly includes local skyways that link the Ridgefield refuge with nearby bird oases at La Center, Woodland and Vancouver Lake, she said. That’s where birders know they’ll spot migrating birds, including swans, geese, neotropical songbirds and rare sandhill cranes. All three sites are included in Washington Audubon’s “Great Washington State Birding Trail” for Southwest Washington.

“When the Cowlitz Tribe announced the design for the ilani hotel before it was built, with the glass exterior to ‘reflect the sky,’ Vancouver Audubon wrote to the Cowlitz Tribe raising concerns about birds,” Saul said by email. “Particularly since it is on the flyway between Ridgefield (National Wildlife Refuge) and the La Center Bottoms. We never received a response.”

Tribute

Ornithologists and amateur birders are working to illuminate the problem of urban light pollution, both because it erases the magical night sky we used to know, and because it wreaks havoc on nature — especially birds.

“As migrating birds pass over brightly lit cities, skyglow drowns out the stars, confusing them and luring them into urban areas,” Saul said. “Once trapped in the windowed maze of the city, birds either hit buildings directly or circle them until they collapse from exhaustion.”

There’s no better example of this problem than the Tribute in Light, New York City’s annual Sept. 11 memorial observance.

The ethereal Tribute in Light is two brilliant beams that shine directly upwards every Sept. 11 from the former site of the World Trade Center’s twin towers. Even though it’s switched on for just one day a year, data collected by bird-watching volunteers suggest that the Tribute in Light has affected as many as 160,000 birds each year. From 2008 to 2016, it’s estimated that 1.1 million individual birds’ migration journeys were interrupted by the lights.

According to a 2017 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the twin beams amass a density of birds that’s up to 150 times of normal for that airspace. The birds show distress and confusion as they fly in circles and call to one another. The detour uses vital energy and leaves them at risk of exhaustion and starvation, as well as increasing the risk that they’ll collide with nearby buildings.

So, starting in 2010, the Tribute in Light’s operators agreed to dim the beams for 15-20 minutes at a time, as requested by volunteers monitoring the volume of trapped birds. When the beams disappear, birds are able to get their bearings and get on their way again.

“The Tribute in Light organizers are always respectful of our requests and we are continually thankful for their willingness to help us ensure that the Tribute is safe for nocturnally migrating birds,” the New York City Bird Alliance posted in 2022.

Ridgefield

The 14-story ilani hotel may not be within what Saul called “the windowed maze of the city,” but it is the tallest building in Clark County. To some, it represents the leading edge of urban growth in a previously rural area.

“Unstoppable growth, it’s getting out of hand,” said Zeiner. “I’m scared of the refuge getting cut off completely.”

Just west of ilani, Ridgefield is both fast-growing and the home of the celebrated wildlife refuge. McCormick and Johnson, who consider themselves part of a global push for dark sky awareness and preservation, say they appreciate strong bird protections built into Ridgefield’s lighting-development rules and codes. They also watch to make sure they’re being enforced.

Zeiner said big lights at the new Ridgefield Outdoor Recreation Complex are supposed to go dark at night. Ridgefield city manager Steve Stuart confirmed that they do.

“Field lights are only on if there are activities on the fields and go off afterwards,” Stuart said. “Commercial buildings in Ridgefield are all required to have lighting that is shielded so that light does not escape upwards, but there is no requirement that all of their lights go off at night when they close.”

An official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which operates the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, wasn’t available to comment by press time.

Zeiner noted that the Cowlitz Indian Tribe has become a powerful economic and political force in Clark County — so powerful that some are reluctant to criticize it.

“They have money. They have grants that people want to go after, including us,” Zeiner said. “We rely on the Cowlitz. I hope we can find better ways to have the conversations we need to have.”