Cook County, IL Animal Ordinances: Bird Protection (2026)

Section 2-6 of the Cook County Code, added by Ordinance No. 02-O-32 in 2002 and amended by Ordinance No. 08-O-46 on July 22, 2008, sits inside the County's own green-building mandate administered by the Department of Capital Planning and Policy. Subsections (f) and (g), added by the 2008 amendment, require that 'new construction and major renovation projects' undertaken by the County incorporate bird-safe building materials and design features, expressly pointing building teams to the City of Chicago's Bird-Safe Building Design Guide for New Construction and Renovation, the City of Toronto's Bird-Friendly Development Guidelines, and New York City Audubon's Bird-Safe Building Guidelines as the reference standards for the glazing, lighting, and facade choices that reduce bird strikes.

Subsection (g) extends the policy to the County's existing building stock, directing that existing buildings be made bird-safe 'where practicable' rather than by a hard retrofit deadline. This is a design mandate the County imposes on itself: it governs buildings the County constructs, owns, or capital-improves, courthouses, forest preserve facilities, the County hospital system, administrative offices, anywhere in Cook County, including inside incorporated municipalities such as Chicago, because it is a directive to the County's own capital-projects process rather than a zoning or building-permit rule reaching private property.

There is no companion provision in the Code applying bird-safe glazing or lighting standards to privately owned commercial or residential construction; a homeowner or private developer building anywhere in the County, incorporated or not, is not reached by Section 2-6. The Department of Capital Planning and Policy administers compliance through the County's design-review and capital-budget approval process rather than through the permit counter used for private construction.