American wildlife conservationists have issued a warning that wind farms might drive whooping cranes, the lattest North American bird, to extinction if proper studies are not carried out before installing mills. “Companies want to put their farms where the best wind is, and that overlaps with the migration corridor of the whooping crane,” Tom Stehn, the whooping crane coordinator of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, told AFP. “There are areas where we know large numbers of whooping crane stop (during migration) and we would like wind companies to avoid those areas, with a good buffer zone,” he said.
Concerns about the impact that windmills are not new and pressure has been mounting over the years to avoid cases like this. The good news is that offshore wind farms pose a smaller risk to migrating birds as they seem to be able to avoid them.
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Jennifer Lancey