Almost 7 million birds perish at communication towers in North America each year | Hacker News Reader

Almost 7 million birds perish at communication towers in North America each year

sciencedaily.com

59 pointsllambda42 comments

It's a bit odd that we hear a lot more about the ~300k birds killed annually by windmills than 7 million killed by communication towers (I didn't even know about this one). I would guess because windmills are a hotter political issue.

And that pales in comparison to the number of birds killed by glass. Estimates of 100 million to 1 billion birds annually in the US alone. Every time I hear bird-deaths as an argument against windmills I want to scream until I die.

[1]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4134773/ns/us_news-environment/t...

Going further, the number of birds killed for human consumption is even greater: 8.9 billion chickens in the US per year.

The difference is farmed poultry isn't an environmental concern (well, the waste they produce is, but not the birds themselves).

Neither are a few million birds too dumb to avoid guy-wires.

Birds dying from glass is actually a rather simple problem to solve - eagle stickers.

Apparently if you put a sticker of an eagle's silhuette on every couple of windows most birds will stay away and won't hit the glass. I see this mostly done on our motorways though ... never seen it on a skyscraper yet.

It wouldn't stop the crows where I work. They patrol the skies like the RAF during a zeppelin raid. Not only do they chase off bigger birds, like eagles and buzzards, but they go after most anything that moves (except humans... for now). To top it off, they systematically test the windows of our building every two weeks or so. They'll fly up to peck or pound on one window, then work clockwise around the building.

Scary smart birds.

They use tools and seem to have a amazing knowledge of the exact range of a shotgun. The local farmers tend not to be amused by some of their antics and feeding habits.

Blue Jays are corvids as well and have a tremendous ability to learn. We had peanuts strewn about a table on our deck for the Jays as well as inside a peanut dispenser for the squirrels. When the first Blue Jay arrived, it called dozens more and the peanuts on the table were exhausted in a matter of minutes. After this, they sat on the railing of the deck and watched the squirrels use the peanut dispenser. After a minute or two of observation, one jumped down and mimicked the squirrel clumsily and was then able to get another peanut. The ones in the dispenser didn't last long after that...

Well, isn't that at least partly because the number of glass windows in most parts of the country is several orders of magnitude greater than the number of windmills? We might need to consider the bird-kill argument a bit more seriously if the plan is to build windmills all over the place.

This link: http://www.coeccc.net/Environmental_Scans/wind_scan_sw_09.pd... there are about 25,000 turbines in the USA. According to GP, 300,000/year birds are killed by wind turbines, which results in about 12 birds killed per turbine per year. This compares with about 83 birds per radio tower.

Of course the growth rate of wind turbines vs towers (and glass windows) is probably different, so you have a point.

Eventually natural selection will take over and the ones that figure out that glass isn't bird-permeable.

The difference is that birds killed by glass are in an urban environment and, because of that, are adapted and, with a few exceptions, not endangered.

In contrast, almost all wind turbines are in rural or wild environments where some endangered species may live.

It's a myth that windmills kill significant numbers of birds, either per mill or per GWh produced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_wind_p...

The methodologies described in the article seem sound to layperson like me, but do keep the last paragraph in mind:

> The study was funded in part by The Urban Wildlands Group, Environment Canada, the American Bird Conservancy and Defenders of Wildlife.

I wonder, for instance, how many total birds migrate each year and if we think communication towers are depleting those numbers. Don't get me wrong, I support common sense solutions to reducing needless bird deaths, but I also like to have context to know how much to worry about things.

Looking at the numbers they offer, it seems like it's about 1 bird per tower every 4 days.

It seems to be an easy fix to reduce an unnecessary environmental impact, save animal lives, save money on carcass cleanup crews and wire damage, and increase public goodwill. Is there a FAA reason for having steady lights, is it bureacratic inertia, or are the rules accommodating the owners of older towers, or the manufacturers of steady lights? I think if I were a pilot a flashing light would catch my attention faster than a steady one (cf, blinking vehicle turn signals).

According to this from the FAA, they commonly approve flashing lights:

http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/policy/dtv/lighting.html

And this advisory (PDF, admittedly from the Alaskan office, but I doubt there is much variance), provides for flashing lights on towers:

http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato...

better coverage in the NYT: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/a-lethal-beacon-fo...

Takeaway:

"... the tallest 2 percent of the towers accounted for 71 percent of the mortalities."

If only they could all be grackles.

I wonder at what point natural selection will start taking effect?

Seeing as how moths still fly into flames, it's probably going to be awhile.

Anyway, that's a shocking number, but I know it happens. I used to work at a TV station in college and once came out to my car to find a goose head on the hood. The body was a few feet away. It apparently had decapitated itself flying into the cables. My coworkers say it happens quite often during the migrations. They fly into the cables at night.

It was a bit disturbing, but made for a good meal!

Whoa, that last line just came out of nowhere.

It is wrong to rely on natural selection for animals to adapt to humans. If that is our philosophy pretty soon we will be left with nothing but numerous species of cockroaches, rats and mosquitoes.

There are many animals that are well adapted to live with humans but most of them are actually bad for humans. Thus, we have to ensure other species survive if for nothing other than the whole they leave ecosystem will likely be filled by harmful species.

For example, the biggest beneficiaries of those millions of dead birds are the mosquitoes and various other insects that are most often food for those dead birds.

That is a tragically large number, and the solution seems easy enough to implement. Activism is the likely missing ingredient. Something needs to be done.

It is birds. Not humans. More humans properly perish from lack of communication.

Screw the birds. Humans are better.

Fortunately we don't have to choose! We can make the red lights more blinky, apparently.

7 million dead birds seems like it would be easy to video/photograph. Choosing to forego documentation that supports these claims has to be intentional.

Please take some time to research your inner techniques of logic, and how you assume outcomes and motives (in general). You appear (to me) prone to jumping to definite conclusions based on faulty logic and/or incomplete data. Not an attack, just a comment.

I can't fault him. Incomplete data is what we have in the real world and while he has shown no evidence in this story a lot of what we read in the media is planted to either pander to their readers or from public relation firms.

I don't think it is a bad habit to assume that this has been planted for some reason. If not, 7 million birds should be enough that you can see them drop in droves. 7 million is a very, very high number.

As noted above, 7 million birds per year, spread across 84,000 towers is about 1 bird per tower every four days. That alone isn't exactly noticeable, and given that most towers are located in out-of-the-way areas, that number of bird deaths could very easily escape notice by most people.

I assumed there were a lot fewer towers.

Either way, I still wonder why this story was selected and not some other story (there is only so many stories a news paper can write) and because I have become cynical I assume that it was either a PR agency or pandering. I have not heard any evidence for anything else.

I'm going to assume kangaroos have psychokinetic powers and are secretly plotting to take over the world.

I have not heard any evidence for anything else.

Surely it is up to you to disprove my theory if you don't think it is correct.

waterlesscloud at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3903033:

> Looking at the numbers they offer, it seems like it's about 1 bird per tower every 4 days.

Eventually you'd discover that (in some as yet unknown, obscure way) humans can't survive without birds. For your edification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology

Well we are not talking about killing all the birds. We are talking about some dying.

And you don't need an obscure way, I know what China did and what happened there.

But I would rather see ten birds tortured to death, than one human die. Call it speciests if you want.

Not only is this a false dichotomy, but your points are baseless.

> More humans properly perish from lack of communication.

A citation would be helpful.

> Screw the birds. Humans are better.

To some humans, maybe. Screw X, Y is better has not been a good guide.

I didn't see a solution mentioned?

"Longcore estimated that changing the steady-burning lights on the 4,500 towers greater than 490 feet tall (about 6 percent of the total) could reduce mortality about 45 percent, or about 2.5 million birds. The study also recommended that businesses share towers to reduce their number and build more freestanding towers to reduce the need for guy wires."

edit: After I posted this I realized you may be talking about the Activism component mentioned above? Not sure.

The solution is to build new towers without guy-wires.

To operate a communications tower in the US, you need a permit from the FCC. To get a permit or renew a permit from the FCC, you have to file an Environmental Impact Statement. Based on this study, it will likely no longer be possible to claim that a tower with guy-wires has no significant impacts. This means towers without guy-wires will likely be the preferred alternative in an EIS, and what you will have to build if you want a new permit. To renew a permit, you will likely have to have blinking lights, or at least have a very convincing reason for not using them in your EIS.

Also, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, with a few exceptions, outlaws all take of migratory birds. That will likely also come into play.

Activism and lawsuits may speed up the process, but assuming this study is replicated by future studies, the wheels have already started turning.

sage goes in every field.

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