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For this special event, join area scholars and activists in a presentation and panel discussion on the Lights Out Connecticut initiative. Every year, bird migration is significantly impacted by light pollution. Listen to experts from Yale University, Sacred Heart University, Lights Out Connecticut, the International Dark-Sky Association, and Connecticut Audubon to learn how you can help in your community.
The Lights Out panel:
Viveca Morris works as a research scholar at Yale University and the Executive Director of the Law, Ethics & Animals Program at Yale Law School. She leads the Yale Bird-Friendly Building Initiative, which aims to accelerate the development and adoption of bird-friendly building design on Yale’s campus and beyond.
Leo Smith is the Northeast Regional Director for the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) and the IDA Connecticut chapter president who served 8 years as a member of the IDA Board of Directors and has received the IDA Lifetime Achievement Award (2018). In 2006 he received the Illuminating Engineering Society’s (IES) President’s Award for his participation as a member of the joint IDA/IES Model Outdoor Lighting Ordinance Task Force.
Craig Repasz serves as co-chair of Lights Out Connecticut, the President of the New Haven Bird Club, and Chair of the Connecticut Ornithological Association science committee.
Meredith Barges, co-chair of Lights Out Connecticut and student policy researcher at Yale Law School, aims to make our cities and towns safer for migratory birds. In 2021, she convinced Yale Divinity School to join Lights Out. Most weekends, you can find her birding in East Rock Park or in the Yale DivFarm tending Milkweed, Coneflower, and Cosmos for pollinators.
