Lately I have been sitting with the brooding knowledge that at least 7 million migrating songbirds were killed this spring running the gauntlet of 84,000 American communication towers that rise as high as 2,000 feet into the sky, braced by invisible guy wires that garotte the birds right out of the air.
This is actually just a fraction of the number of birds killed each year by running a collision course with human activity.
This spring has been more silent than ever. The traditional dawn chorus of birdsong has ebbed to a few lonely little souls, most belonging to non-migratory species like cardinals, bluejays, chickadees and sparrows.
They say that when Europeans first arrived on this continent, the migration of the passenger pigeons would literally darken the sky for minutes on end.
I have never seen a living passenger pigeon, and it seems that my grandchildren will not know what I mean when I talk about the dawn chorus of riotously busy, happy birdsong, any more than they will be able to imagine an apple orchard in full bloom buzzing with the diligent harvest of a million droning bees.
Knowledge like this makes me sick at heart. My rational side is aware that mourning is not productive, but another side of me knows that it is one of the special gifts of us humans to feel grief; to locate particular sadnesses in the larger landscape of suffering; and to use our sadness and anger at injustice as a lightening rod for change.
Other animals and birds feel grief as well, but you won’t find the great community of birds gathering together to make plans to topple all the communication towers in North America.
No, the birds will go quietly, one by one, into the endless night of extinction.
Just as it was our ingenuity that created those needle-like structures, held up by steel deathwires, it is our job as humans to recognize the destruction we are causing and make sure it changes.
I am not suggesting that we give up our communications towers—that would truly be a quixotic quest!
I am suggesting that we place value on the lives of 7 million birds—the number that scientists estimate are killed annually by communications towers taller than 180 feet.
What can be done? Well, there must be some way to make those wires visible to the birds. We could drape them with some kind of fabric, or coat them with a glittering reflective paint. We could emit some kind of sound signal that would alert the birds to avoid the tower area.
The scientists studying this issue noted that simply changing the lights on the towers from solid red lights, which apparently mesmerize the birds in bad weather, to blinking lights, “could reduce mortality about 45 percent, or about 2.5 million birds. The study also recommended that businesses share towers to reduce their number and build more freestanding towers to reduce the need for guy wires.”
As we saw when Rachel Carson succeeded in getting DDT banned, bird populations can and do rebound if given the chance.
But not once they’re extinct.
We must act now, before the songbirds follow the passenger pigeons into permanent silence.
Transition Times 
Martin Lack
/ April 29, 2012I had not heard of this issue (birds being garotted by guy wires), but had heard a similar argument used to protest about wind turbines. If using flashing red lights is better than non-flashing red lights that would seem a simple enough solution. However, I am not hopeful. Thanks to Greenpeace, Bayer have made headlines this week for seeking to subvert plans to ban a group of pesticides that seem to have unintended pathological effects on bees.
It is therefore very sad that, nearly 50 years after Carson wrote Silent Spring, humanity is still mesmerised by mutli-national companies (whose products are more expensive and less effective than biological control). Worse than that of course, Carson has been subjected to revisionist attack and blamed for the deaths of millions that might have survived if DDT had not been banned…
Barry Lehrman
/ May 4, 2012Bird deaths caused by collision with anthropogenic objects is a major issue (n=500,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 bird deaths annually – source below). However, communication towers are responsible for ~0.5% of all anthropogenic avian deaths, while collision with buildings (highrises and windows of single family houses) is the cause of almost 60% of avian mortality. Let’s not forget the domestic cat too.
I’ve noticed that EIRs for wind projects and highrise buildings are starting to look at potential avian impacts and methods to mitigate or avoid bird strikes.
The source that I’m always pointing my students to is:
Click to access 1029-1042.pdf
another source is:
http://www.duke.edu/web/nicholas/bio217/ptb4/avian.html
-Barry
http://infrascapedesign.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/condors-versus-wind-turbines/
Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez
/ May 4, 2012Thanks for these sources, Barry! I just think that with a little creative tinkering, we could make the guy wires avoidable for birds–the problem is that they don’t perceive them until it’s too late.
Very depressing….
Barry Lehrman
/ May 4, 2012let’s first look at the biggest causes of avian mortality – collision with windows of buildings. There are decals, films, and coatings that can enable birds to notice the surface. We can also turn off the lights at night at peak migration time. Lots of research and development has already been invested.
Oh, more birds die from being electrocuted from power lines then the guy wires – and the utilities have a big incentive to avoid this as it costs them money from power outages. This is where your solution probably already exists.