It is unfortunate that windmills kill a small proportion of birds, i wonder why the old style wind powered water pumps and flour mills didn't attract such attention?
How about because, in ones and twos, they weren't all that destructive? Birds can avoid windmills that occur in singletons, or have space enough between them. It is only when they are closely spaced together and cover literally square miles that they become problematic.
One windfarm out this way was situated in a migratory path between two mountains. Altamont pass, in northern California, placed there because the wind is dependable, strong and no humans would want anything to do with the area, has caused havoc . Tens of thousands of bird strikes have occurred there alone since it was installed.
California condors, still incredibly endangered, (there are only 230 condors in the wild) are in special danger. So are bald and golden eagles. The problem for the industry is that it is extremely illegal, even unintentionally, to kill one. Huge fines can be, and are, leveled at windfarm owners when one has a fatal encounter with one of their turbines.
So...what to do? Here's what NOT to do; pretend that the problem isn't real, that windfarms don't really kill that many birds (they do) Doing that is, as far as I can see, as short sighted and illogical as pretending that the globe isn't warming or that the magnetic poles aren't in the process of flipping or that Los Angeles isn't a WHOLE lot less smoggy than it was in 1960.
What I do see is that those who claim that windfarms aren't all THAT destructive are the same people who criticize those who are 'global warming deniers" for believing that humans are not solely responsible for it. They are driven by political agendas and aren't actually thinking about the science. Windfarms ARE that destructive. Really. Denying that a problem exists means that the problem won't ever get solved.
On the other hand, windfarm owners do seem to be a bit more concerned about the problem than their critics think. They are attempting many different ways of avoiding bird kills, like radar that warn of large flocks coming their way in time to shut the turbines down, or painting them different colors in order to avoid attracting birds, or installing UV lights to deter bats...in the case of the California Condor, which is at risk mostly in southern California, the very big farms in the Tehachapi mountains have systems which track the condors. Right now almost all condors have GPS chips (hey, most of 'em have had to have been hand-raised before being released into the wild). When the windfarm detects that one is within two miles of the turbines, everything gets shut down..takes two minutes. That solution won't work with most birds, though, and once condors are reproducing reliably in the wild, it won't work for them, either. The best solution seems to be...putting the farms where the birds aren't. Which means that mountain passes in the middle of migratory paths are a Bad Idea. Putting them in wetlands, or just offshore? Also a Bad Idea. According to the Audobon Society, most of these attempts are not working really well, but at least the people causing the problem are working to solve it. That's actually rather refreshing.
And, at least, the windfarm folks are working on the problem rather than denying that it exists. I wish that the far left 'green folks' would do the same. Being hypocrites won't solve the problem of energy production OR protect the ecology.
