I walked next door to my neighbor Frank’s house and asked him if I could borrow his ax to do some yard work. Frank looked at me for a second and said, “Naw, I guess you can’t borrow my ax. Tomorrow is Monday.”
Puzzled, I thought for a moment and then asked Frank, “What’s that got to do with me borrowing your ax?”
“Nothing, really,” exclaimed Frank. “But if I don’t want you to borrow my ax, I suppose one excuse is just as good as another.”
I tell that story often when I want to make a point. The point being that sometimes we as humans just plain are contradictory at times and will come up with most anything for excuses. I was reading an article this morning about windmills and how some people are quite upset by the fact that windmills are known to kill birds. This is true. I’m not trying to deny that fact at all and being a true conservationist, I don’t want to see any animal die needlessly. What I learned from this article put into perspective bird mortality and windmills.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, windmills kill 33,000 birds a year. Man, that’s a lot of birds. I certainly can understand anyone getting upset about killing that many birds from something that appears so non threatening. So how does that compare to other human-caused bird deaths?
Also according to the USFWS, house cats kill hundreds of millions of birds annually – too numerous to count. Our automobiles account for a mere 60 million hit and runs and curses to glass technology and Windex. Birds running into glass on our buildings kills anywhere from 97 to 976 million birds a year. (Does someone really calculate this stuff?) This is insane!
So what’s the big deal about windmills killing a few birds? By comparison it shouldn’t even be an issue. But before I start hearing the “Ya buts”, left me first say that I do understand that as with any and all facts and figures there usually is some kind of explaining to do.
I do understand that there are a lot more automobiles than windmills, far more glass adorning the sides of buildings everywhere and God knows if there weren’t so many cats around my yard wouldn’t smell like cat pee.
The problem with windmills is birds fly into the turning props. Some would ask how stupid a bird could be to fly into a turning prop on a huge windmill. How stupid is a man who would drive his car off the top level of a parking garage? A man’s brain is considerably larger than that of a chickadee, although the chickadee may use a larger part of its brain than the man in the parking garage.
The truth is that since the onset of windmill technology, engineers have learned how to better build a windmill and even where to place them. We all know that a windmill needs to be placed where the wind blows in order to maximize its output but sometimes the same results can be accomplished by moving the towering objects out of a known bird migrating path or away from cliffs where often raptors spend ample time soaring about looking for a meal or protecting their nests.
When the windmill first was built, the crisscrossing metal slats created appealing nesting sites for birds. This would be kind of like a robin building a nest on the side of the radiator of your car. With better designed windmills, it discourages birds from nesting and thus reduces mortality.
Scientists and engineers are working continuously to find better designs and locations to reduce bird kills. What are we doing about cars, glass and house cats? Is it that we cherish these things a lot more than we do birds? Why are we making such a big issue over windmills killing a handful of birds by comparison? Is it simply because the windmill is something we don’t like the looks of? Is it because its new and different? Is it because somehow with think a few windmills are more intrusive on our landscape than smokestacks, a few million automobiles or towering skyscrapers made mostly of glass?
Maybe we don’t want to see windmills built on the hillside outside of town because tomorrow is Monday!
Tom Remington
