[TowerTalk] birds and towers, and other critters

[WA2BPE]

Letters to the editor are appropriate but unless there is a liability issue at stake or someone of "importance" takes issue, seldom do corrections ever reach most papers yet alone read.  If
the "New York Times" can have problems, imagine where that places the newspapers from  "Podunk Ditch" in the getting it right category.  Extrapolations have to be stated as just that and
that they may have some basis of validity or be a crude shot in the dark; usually the latter when simplistically dealing with limited or biased data.

Yes, this needs to be watched before there are knee-jerk reactions by officials of many agencies; Federal, state, and local.  Interestingly too, will be the issue of additional power lines
and (perhaps) wind generation towers (typically 200'+) as the power grid fiasco is sorted out and what to do.  Will these receive "special dispensation" while communication towers see a
different level of scrutiny?

Tom - WA2BPE


Jim Lux wrote:

> The towerkill web site makes the point that tall lighted towers (which are
> the ones at issue here, by the way) are not the only, or even the major,
> source of bird kills. They point out (as did a poster a couple of days ago)
> that most towers are regulated by the same entity, and you've got to start
> somewhere, so you might as well start somewhere easy.
>
> They also point out that bird kills don't correlate well with corpses at the
> base because of scavenging carnivores.  The recent studies actually use
> radar to detect the falling bird corpses.
>
> I think the take home message for hams is that this bears watching, and to
> make sure that the "lighted towers over 200 feet" doesn't get generalized
> into all towers.  Even more important is to make sure that this issue
> doesn't get coopted by the "no towers, no where" folks.  You want to be
> rational and keep pointing back to the documented evidence when rule making
> gets started.
>
> A gentle reminder to the *editor* (as well as the writer) of the media
> publishing an unwarranted extrapolation regarding the importance of
> "fact-checking" allegations might also be in order. A one-time 10,000 one
> night bird kill (which is well documented) does not say much about how many
> kills/year, but is probably newsworthy in its own right (in the same sense
> as mass groundings of whales).  The media's responsibility is to poke holes
> in someone who takes that 10,000 number, multiplies it by 365 and multiplies
> it by 2000 to get "billions of birds per year".
>
> But, get YOUR ducks in a row before sending such a reminder.
>
> Jim, W6RMK
>
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