The restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris has revealed the ancient cathedral as not only a cultural symbol but an urban wildlife refuge that can serve as an example of conservation across the world including Australia.
More than just a cathedral, Notre-Dame is an urban ecosystem. Its towering structure and countless hidden crevices offer a sanctuary to species that have adapted to the challenges of city life. The façade’s original openings, designed in the Middle Ages to accommodate construction beams, have become essential nesting sites for birds.
World-wide, urban wildlife has come under threat as old buildings with nooks and crannies used for nesting sites vanish amid modernisation and gentrification, and increasing pollution levels from traffic take their toll.
Notre-Dame, however, became an important refuge for house sparrows, whose population has plummeted by 75 per cent in the French capital in just two decades. A falcon, the common kestrel, has also dwindled to fewer than 30 pairs in Paris but some find a home in the cathedral and nearby buildings.
Besides birds, there is a mammal species that calls the cathedral home – a tiny bat, the pipistrelle.
French wildlife experts are highlighting the potential for harmony between heritage preservation and biodiversity. The restored Notre-Dame not only stands as a testament to architectural resilience but also as a beacon of hope for urban wildlife, proving that even in the heart of a bustling city, nature can find sanctuary.
Note-Dame was largely destroyed by fire in 2019 and its reopening in December after its costly restoration has become part of a larger movement by France’s ornithological association, La Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux, to protect biodiversity in historic and cultural sites. As part of an ecological survey for seven cathedrals outside Paris, the organisation has provided nesting boxes for swifts and swallows and continued monitoring a pair of peregrine falcons which have been nesting on Albi Cathedral in Toulouse since 2001.
Peregrines are perhaps the best known of wild creatures that have used old and new city structures as part of their environment. These magnificent falcons – a universal species and the fastest creature on earth – sometimes choose to nest on high-rise buildings which resemble their cliff-ledge nesting sites In nature.
The most famous nest in Australia is on the window ledge of a tower-block along Collins St, Melbourne, which has hosted peregrines for more than three decades. But I don’t know if the Australian species of kestrel has ever nested on buildings, as they do in France and Britain.
When it comes to urban birding, I usually have my sights on another master of the skies, the tree martin. A walk down our own Collins St in the CBD during spring and summer will reveal them hawking insects just above the traffic, and returning to cavity nesting sites in some of the older buildings.