The environmentalist's myth of a free lunch

SOLAR PANELS FRYING BIRDS ALONG MAJOR MIGRATION PATH

Some animal rights activists are wondering just how many birds green energy may unintentionally kill as more and more birds turn up dead at solar energy facilities throughout California.

A recent article by Vice author Lex Berko notes that dead birds are being found with "singed wings" around several California solar energy facilities.

It happens that many of California's solar plants are, the article claims, in the path of "the four major north-to-south trajectories for migratory birds" called "the Pacific Flyway."

Birds are dying in one of two ways. In some cases, they imagine the shining solar panels to be bodies of water and dive straight into them. There they die when they smash into the panels from the sky.

Others "feel the wrath of the harnessed sunlight." The ultra polished solar mirrors bounce sunrays strong enough to burn the feathers off birds that quickly crash to the ground, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Many of the fowl dying as a result of their unfortunate flight paths over solar facilities are birds protected by the federal government under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Eric Davis of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently told a reporter from The Desert Sun that the feds are "waiting" for more information about these bird deaths.

"Bird migration studies have to wait for bird migrations," Davis said. "It's not like we're going to have the answers in two weeks. This is going to be months and years of trying to better understand the problem and then make better management decisions as we gain more scientific understanding."

There are also thousands of birds killed by wind turbine farms throughout the country. This means that untold numbers of birds, some of them protected species, are being killed by green energy.