Greetings Nfcers,
While the phenomenon of avian towerkill is not directly related to night
flight calls, it does involve night migration. I started to get involved in
the avian towerkill issue back in 1996. I had been contracted to do an
acoustic study of avian nocturnal migration at a proposed commercial wind
energy facility in the prairie region of north-central Nebraska. I put one
of my acoustic stations near the base of a 317-ft guyed radio tower,
primarily to take advantage of the AC power at the site. Got lots of
interesting flight calls but unexpectedly in spring 1997 I also recorded a
number of avian collision sounds with the tower. This really began to open
my eyes to the potential collision hazards of even short tower structures to
night migrating birds.
There has been an ongoing effort to mitigate mortality of nocturnal migrant
songbirds at communications towers for the past decade. The Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) is currently holding another public comment
period on the towerkill issue. This stems from a lawsuit led by the American
Bird Conservancy & Forest Conservation Council, and a decision by the D.C.
Circuit Court that prevented the FCC (under pressure from corporate
lobbying) from dismissing the avian towerkill issue. While comments
submitted during the previous FCC comment periods regarding this issue are
still in play, this current comment period regards input on whether the FCC
should conduct a programmatic Environmental Impact Assessment (EIS) on its
Antennae Structure Registration program. The answer is clearly yes, because
the avian towerkill issue is not as much site specific as it involves all
towers -- the impact to birds is cumulative as well as site specific and the
primary mitigation would involve a change in aviation obstruction lighting
regulations for all towers. The FCC currently abides by an Environmental
Assessment (EA) program on a tower by tower basis, but this does not address
cumulative impacts. Elevating the environmental review of the FCC's antennae
structure regulation program to an EIS would help assure that the avian
towerkill issue gets the appropriate mitigative attention for cumulative
impacts. [e.g., by some estimates, more than 1% of the Cerulean Warbler
population is killed at towers annually]
One of the more significant direct conservation actions for songbirds is
before us right now and the comment period ends in 9 days. An easy way to
support this effort is to sign the petition at the Defenders of Wildlife
webpage
https://secure.defenders.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1769
As with other issues involving federal agencies and big corporations,
success in instituting strong environmental regulations is dependent upon
the teamwork of large conservation organizations -- in this case American
Bird Conservancy, Defenders of Wildlife, Forest Conservation Council, and
National Audubon Society are all worthy of our support.
For those with more time you can find out more information and submit your
own comments directly to the FCC at: http://www.fcc.gov/pea All comments
submitted to the FCC on this issue since 2003 are available on the FCC
webpage http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/comsrch_v2.cgi entering 03-187 in
box #1, and then clicking the Retrieve Document List button.
Yours in bird,
Bill Evans
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