Preserving the (not-so) swift

Caught a story on TV recently about how a town saved a species of bird--swifts.  It appears the chimney smoke they liked to hover around on rooftops of factories in the town was killing them in large groups, but every day they hovered anyway. After watching them kill themselves for several agonizing months, the townsfolk finally resolved to switch off factory machines at the time of day when the birds hovered most. That’s all they needed to stay alive, somebody to turn off the machines. The birds are doing just fine now. Think they did it on purpose?