I love wind power... but I also love to discuss a good counterpoint.  Wind power is MEGA green source of energy no doubt and with each revolution of its blades, the turbine will probably turn another Cleveland kid onto sustainability but the ecological impacts of turbines as far as avian species go should not be ignored. Rather they should embraced from the very get go.   You see while coal burning power plants may emit ethyl methyl death on a regular basis people do not usually go looking for dead birds under the smoke stacks and stir up bad PR because stacks are on private property.. and the owner may be less than likely to share that sort of information with anyone.

Wind turbines have, on the other hand been attracting the bird huggers attention for quite some time now.  I have never heard of them going as far as to say that wind turbines are worse than coal or say nuclear power plants because it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that this is not an apples to apples comparison.   What I am saying is that when such noted downtown residents such as the Peregrine falcon, (Falco peregrinus) whom just happen to be on the endangered species list gets whacked out of the sky by a rotor blade don’t say I did not warn you. 

Do you know what happens to people that kill endangered species?  http://www.ohiodnr.com/endangered/endangered4.htm 

Has the GLSC legal team put together a contingency plan?

For quite some time now people (especially out west) have been rallying against wind power, all the while others are working to determine the best way to reduce night time avian impacts via LED's and other sorts of doo-dads.  One of the better academic web sites on this clearly negative impact of wind power is the North Carolina Wind Energy site run by Appalachian State University. http://www.wind.appstate.edu/research/avian.php

 Heck, Beech Mountain Wind Farm even has its own carcass monitoring program available for download in PDF format at http://www.wind.appstate.edu/reports/BeechMountaincarcassmonitoringmethod.pdf And while I am sure the program is not without flaws there it is out in cyberspace and freely available for download by the folks at our lovely Great Lakes Science Center.

I for one would like to go on record as stating that I sincerely hope the GLSC embraces its hard earned and brand spanking new ecological impact with open arms and moves to formalize a transparent avian impact monitoring program... after all have you seen how many species have been identified over at Dike 14? 

http://www.balancedlivingmag.com/2005/January%20-%20February%202005/Dike%2014.htm 

http://www.wcpn.org/news/2001/01-03/0308dike.html 

 This sort of makes me wonder if there is going to be an emerging market for avian impact credit trading at the Chicago Climate Exchange ;-) 

ps - I am not an alarmist. 

Hello   Zebra Muscle,

Thanks for the informed feedback and the links.  I hope GLSC takes the mortality study to heart.

Several thoughts:

 I think that you should be harder on the fossil industry. Your quote  “You see while coal burning power plants may emit ethyl methyl death on a regular basis people do not usually go looking for dead birds under the smoke stacks and stir up bad PR because stacks are on private property.. and the owner may be less than likely to share that sort of information with anyone”  (my underlines) is not accurate and lets the fossil industry (and energy consumers) off much too lightly.

We don’t need to look on private generation property for dead birds.  The gases that come out of fossil plants (constantly – not occasionally)  are killing birds, - and everything else - including humans – around the globe.   Fossil generators and gasoline burners use the world’s atmosphere as a septic tank.   Every bit of gas which comes out of smokestacks, chimneys, and tailpipes is poison.  That’s the reason for those expensive tubular structures – move the poison away from the machine that produces it, so it won’t be so concentrated that it will kill the operators and users nearby. 

All these fossil plants and machines which burn fossil fuels are actually poison atomizers,  turning coal and oil into aerosol sewerage spewed into the global atmosphere.  Consider the 1950’s photos of health workers spraying cloudy mists of DDT on the public beaches for mosquito control – when we see those photos today we are freaked out by how stupid we were then. Well it is just a matter of time till we look back at fossil chimneys and tailpipes and are freaked out by how stupid we were (i.e. are now). 

My point is that we are killing birds  - and everything else that is living - right now around the globe – but don’t want to see it.    But dead seagulls or pigeons under the GLSC turbine will be hard negative PR.  To balance this negative PR the GLSC needs to demonstrate to the public the avian deaths caused by fossil fuels, highway bird collisions, building glass bird collisions, etc etc. in order to put the carcasses under the turbine into a fair context. 

We also need to continue to improve turbine design and warning systems to help birds and bats avoid turbines.