NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) will host the next installment of its Green Living Seminar Series on Wednesday, April 8, at 5:30 p.m. in the Feigenbaum Center for Science and Innovation, Room 121.

 

The presentation is free and open to the public and will be recorded and available at mcla.edu/greenliving.

 

Meredith Barges, bird-friendly building policy advocate and PhD student at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, will present "How Laws Protecting Birds Strengthen Human Communities."

 

The talk will explore a growing movement to make cities more bird friendly by requiring developers, designers, and city planners to consider birds as essential inhabitants of the modern urban landscape. Barges will examine new trends and policy developments driving what she calls an "avian shift" in reimagining human-avian coexistence in cities—and what these changes mean for the health and well-being of human communities as well.

 

Barges' dissertation combines policy theory and environmental ethics to examine the dynamics driving the adoption—and nonadoption—of mandatory municipal bird-friendly building policies across U.S. and Canadian cities. From 2024 to 2026, she founded and chaired Lights Out Central New York, a nonprofit project of Onondaga Audubon dedicated to making the night sky safer for migratory birds. She previously co-founded and co-chaired Lights Out Connecticut, where she helped lead a successful statewide effort to pass Connecticut's Lights Out Law (Public Act 23-143). Barges also served as policy researcher for the Yale Bird-Friendly Building Initiative—a collaboration of the American Bird Conservancy, Yale Law School, and Yale Peabody Museum—and co-authored its foundational report, Building Safer Cities for Birds: How Cities Are Leading the Way on Bird-Friendly Building Policy. She holds a Master of Divinity in religion and ecology from Yale Divinity School and an M.A. in American history from the University of Chicago.

 

MCLA's Green Living Seminar Series brings environmental experts, scholars, and practitioners to campus throughout the academic year to engage students and community members in conversations about sustainability, ecology, and our relationship with the natural world.

 

For more information, contact Elena Traister at elena.traister@mcla.edu or 413-662-5303.