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Monday, August 18, 2014

Solar Plant's Downside? Birds Igniting In Midair

Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant's concentrated sun rays - "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.

Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one "streamer" every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator's application to build a still-bigger version.

The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

But if there is one oil soaked bird the left demands drilling be halted. Where's their outrage for torching these poor innocent birds?

Anonymous said...

This i believe ...wind power and birds problem not si much

Anonymous said...

where's the audubon society on this one?

Anonymous said...

Pitting one 'green' group against another - dead silence.

Put an oil company in place of either one and you have all the outrage you can handle......