Birds Flaming-Up in Flight Over California – What?!

I never thought I would read the following headline in a non-tabloid publication: “Why birds are igniting in midair over Calif.”!!! But it clearly appears on yesterday’s USA Today Nation News webpage (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/19/newser-birds-energy-solar-calif/14282915/).  I doubt I could have even made up such a bizarre, true headline!

I strongly believe that anything that further diminishes the bird population of our country to a significant degree needs to be checked out with the goal of stopping it! For years I’ve had the disturbing thought that I was seeing fewer and fewer birds; as I heard rumors about my observation reflecting a true and sad reality.  

According to the National Audubon Society bird webpage “All 20 birds on the national Common Birds in Decline list lost at least half their populations in just four decades… The findings point to growing impact from the many environmental challenges our birds face, from habitat loss from development, deforestation, and conversion of land to agriculture, to climate change. Only citizen action can make a difference for the birds and the state of our future.” (http://birds.audubon.org/common-birds-decline) 

But this doesn’t specifically explain why some birds are apparently flaming up and out over CA! However USA Today News Staff writer Elizabeth Armstrong Moore lays the blame at the feet of a solar technology installation in the Mojave Desert of California: “Wildlife officials say they've counted one bird being scorched to death every two minutes by intensely focused rays of light at the BrightSource Energy plant, considered the largest solar thermal power plant of its kind in the world... Wildlife experts say that at least 1,000 and as many as 28,000 birds…” will be killed per year.  I hope different “Wildlife experts” don’t have political agendas that might wrongly alter their estimates… surely not...  But why such wide range? Even half of the higher number would mean the horrible loss of 14,000 birds year after year. (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/19/newser-birds-energy-solar-calif/14282915/) 

It’s no surprise that yesterday The San Diego NBC affiliate also published an online article by Ellen Knickmeyer and John Locher.  I want to share a quote from this article that really stuck in my craw:

“Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant's concentrated sun rays – ‘streamers,’ for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair… Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one ‘streamer’ every two minutes…”(http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Solar-Plants-in-Mojave-Desert-Scorch-Birds-271886891.html#ixzz3AsOhTTNM).” 

Fortunately the “Federal wildlife investigators” who visited the site last year are now opposing an application to build a second, similar solar plant. The Federal Wildlife Commission is calling for a halt to this type of solar installation until extensive environmental impact studies can be completed.

The existing BrightSource Mojave Solar Energy installation has: “More than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect solar rays onto three boiler towers each looming up to 40 stories high.” Although it appears the proposed plant might only have one 75 story tower, some members of the “commission staff estimate(s) the proposed new tower would be almost four times as dangerous to birds as…” as the current towers.

The article also says The Chairman of the California Energy Commission said… “the toll on the birds has been surprising.” It indicates the Commission didn’t foresee this deadly outcome. However, they no longer have this excuse as they consider the application to build a similar solar plant with “mirror field and 75-story tower that would reach above the sand dunes and creek washes between Joshua Tree National Park and the California-Arizona Border…”

The birds that would likely be impacted by the proposed plant is on a flight path for birds between the Colorado River and California's largest lake, the Salton Sea -- an area experts say is populated with “protected golden eagles and peregrine falcons and more than 100 other species of birds recorded there.” The article also notes that wind generated power results in the death of some wildlife, including a wide variety of birds, and that the Federal Wildlife Commission is allowing this.

Source: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Solar-Plants-in-Mojave-Desert-Scorch-Birds-271886891.html#ixzz3AwlcYBVq

Obviously more trustworthy environmental impact data is needed to make more informed conclusions.  I can only assume that the FWC realizes the importance of weighing the need for an adequate national power supply against the likelihood that any current, feasible means of providing it is going to be fatal one way or another to some kind(s) of wildlife, to one degree or another. Yet, is it too idealistic to hope that over the next four decades our country will not see a decline in common birds equal to or even greater than the past four decades?