Horrible pictures - Eagle sliced in two found at Danish windfarm

[longknife]

By Guest Column Mark Duchamp Horrible pictures - Eagle sliced in two found at Danish windfarm

Oh yeah! Let's do away with all the other sources of energy and put up huge blades to slice through birds all over the world. So goes this story from Denmark with links to similar slaughters in Spain. We also don't here of them here in the USA.

So we kill a few birds. So what? Ask yourself just what do birds do to make the world a better place to live. Or, don't you care? [Oops. Let's forget about the Greenies screaming to protect the Spotted Owl which was becoming extinct due to its own lack of adaptability]

 

[Meathead]

Must be a major moon-wobble tonight.

 

[Mr. H.]

Wind turbines kill up to 39 million birds a year!

 

[Old Rocks]

Wind turbines kill up to 39 million birds a year!

http://www.abcbirds.org/abcprograms/policy/cats/pdf/Loss_et_al_2013.pdf

Anthropogenic threats, such as collisions with man-made structures, vehicles, poisoning and predation by domestic pets, combine to kill billions of wildlife annually. Free-ranging domestic cats have been introduced globally and have contributed to multiple wildlife extinctions on islands. The magnitude of mortality they cause in mainland areas remains speculative, with large-scale estimates based on non-systematic analyses and little consideration of scientific data. Here we conduct a systematic review and quantitatively estimate mortality caused by cats in the United States.We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.4–3.7 billion birds and 6.9–20.7 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals. Scientifically sound conservation and policy intervention is needed to reduce this impact.
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2380
1

 

[Old Rocks]

http://www.muhlenberg.edu/main/acad.../aco/documents/FieldJournal-Mortality1990.pdf

Abstract.—Bird strikes were recorded at the windows of commercial and private buildings to study
the effects of collision mortality on birds, and several experiments were conducted to evaluate
methods of preventing collisions between birds and glass panes. Two single houses that were
systematically monitored annually killed 33 and 26 birds, respectively. Collisions at one house in
the same 4-mo period (September- December) in consecutive years resulted in 26 and 15 fatalities,
respectively. At least one out of every two birds were killed striking the windows of these single
dwellings. The records from these homes also revealed that window strikes are equally lethal for
small and large species. The annual mortality resulting from window collisions in the United States
is estimated at 97.6-975.6 million birds.

 

[Old Rocks]

Bird Strike: deaths caused by collisions with buildings severely dent populations - The Ecologist

In all, it’s estimated that the Toronto skyline accounts for about 1 million bird deaths a year — and even that is just a drop in the bucket. It’s hard to put a precise number on collision-related mortalities, but researcher Scott Loss of the Smithsonian Institute is preparing to publish new research that, based on a sophisticated analysis of 23 previous studies, estimates that between 400 million and 1 billion birds die from window impacts each year in the U.S. alone.


That eye-popping number suggests that window impacts are putting a serious dent in the North American bird population. There are thought to be around 10 to 20 billion birds in the U.S., Loss says, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that up to 10% of the entire U.S. bird population dies, year-in, year-out, due to building collisions.



Troublingly, too, there’s evidence that North America’s most vulnerable species are disproportionately affected. According to Loss’s data, at-risk species including hummingbirds, woodpeckers and various warblers are between 12 and 35 times more likely than the average bird to collide with buildings, perhaps because their migratory routes take them through skyscraper-filled cities such as Toronto, New York and Chicago.

 

[Old Rocks]

39 million birds is a lot. A bad number, but some engineering should be able to prevent most of the collisions with the turbines. Now what are your proposals concerning cats, buildings, and windows?

 

[Mr. H.]

39 million birds is a lot. A bad number, but some engineering should be able to prevent most of the collisions with the turbines. Now what are your proposals concerning cats, buildings, and windows?

Thanks for those links. For mine, I picked a recent one... with a big number.
I'm sure turbine strike figures are all over the chart, but they are all significant.

Cats, buildings, windows... how about "some engineering"? You seem to think such an approach would prevent most collisions with wind turbines. But I suppose the strongest argument would be that any number is acceptable because of the nature of energy generation, i.e. "not hydrocarbons".

 

[Mr. H.]

Which begs the ironic... hydraulic fracturing, according to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, has to her knowledge never caused pollution of fresh water tables.

Yet... the mere possibility that it might occur is so profound as to call for an outright moratorium.

While agriculture is allowed to openly pollute our air, ground, and water while accepting massive sums in government payments to do so.