On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 12:21 PM, Jones Beene <[email protected]> wrote: Hundreds of birds die crashing into tall building every day, but we do not stop building tall buildings because of lost bird habitat.
***Next they will have to outlaw seagulls... Seagulls lure other birds to skyscraper deaths: study Posted: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 under Science in the News<http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/news/science-in-the-news> <http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/news/science-in-the-news> http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/1997/09/04/seagulls-lure-other-birds-to-skyscraper-deaths-study/ London, Sept 4 AFP - Seagulls have learned to lure migrating birds to their deaths by guiding them into skyscrapers, New Scientist magazine reported today. Like the wreckers who used to lure ships on to rocks, the devious gulls cause their prey to crash into high glass buildings and then eat them up, the weekly reported. The phenomenon has been observed in the Canadian city Toronto, which is the home of the world's tallest structure, the CN Tower. While street-wise city birds learn to avoid bright lights and reflective glass, huge numbers of migrating species die every year crashing into the skyscrapers of the United States and Canada. "Some collide with the glass, some drop from exhaustion," Michael Mesure, of Toronto's Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP), a voluntary group dedicated to rescuing stunned birds, told New Scientist. He said seagulls were now posing an extra threat to the migrant birds. The gulls started off scavenging dead birds that had been accidentally killed. But, said Mesure, "as more gulls competed for food, some learned to drive birds into collisions. " They had been seen herding the birds like sheep and driving them to their deaths. Daniel Klem, of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, has calculated that lit-up buildings and smokestacks kill 100 million birds a year in North America. The carnage peaks during spring and autumn migrations when many species, especially songbirds, fly at night and at low altitudes, he told the weekly. The Sears Tower in Chicago killed 1500 birds a year and FLAP estimated that 10,000 birds a year died in Toronto's financial district. In the mid-1980s Toronto's CN Tower started turning its floodlights off for eight weeks in the middle of each three-month migration season after visitors complained that the ground was littered with dead birds. FLAP is trying to persuade the owners of other skyscrapers to do the same. So far the managers of 85 buildings in Toronto have agreed to ask tenants to pull their blinds and turn off their lights. AFP mel 04/09/97 11-01NZ > > > > > > > *From:* ChemE Stewart > > > > $2.2B Boondoggle > > > > > http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/obama-backed-israeli-solar-project-flounders-california > > > > > http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/02/nevadas-massive-solar-plant-death-ray-birds/358244/ > > > > Even Jed's robots can't save it, if they existed :) > > > > I agree on the nuclear. > > > > >
