[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Statement on Condors
- To: carolinabirds@duke.edu
- Subject: Re: Statement on Condors
- From: Joshua Stuart Rose <jsr6@duke.edu>
- Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 10:49:46 -0400 (EDT)
- In-Reply-To: <199909141352.JAA04785@bacchus.acpub.duke.edu>
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
Hi Carolinabirders,
I know that I'm usually the one who posts the political conservation
action messages on the list and suggests that people write their
congressmen and such. However, this one about the wind farm and the
condors sounds a little fishy to me. I suppose that National Audubon is
usually on the right track, but are windmills really a threat to condors?
I could see the windmills being a threat to migrating landbirds, in the
same way that radio towers are: lights that ward off aircraft disorient
the night-flying birds such that they either crash into something or
exhaust themselves and fall to the ground (see http://www.towerkill.com/
for more details on that). However, California Condors don't migrate, as
far as I know. And when they do fly, like all other hawks, they fly
during the day; I've never heard of any non-owl raptor flying at night.
And during the day, the condors will be able to see the windmills from
miles away and avoid them. So, other than general habitat destruction
(and wind farms probably reduce that by reducing fossil fuel dependence
far more than they increase it by occupying land), where is the threat to
the condors? Does anyone out there know of studies showing raptor
mortality around windmills? If so, please let me (and the rest of the
list) know...
Thanks in advance,
Josh
Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Zoology
jsr6@acpub.duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/