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Who Is Might Be Killing the Whooping Cranes of North America?
There are 266 wild whooping cranes in North America (up from just 16 in 1941). They are a protected species that migrates from Canada down Mexico way every year. The biggest threat to cranes these days comes not from trigger-happy hunters with troglodytic tendencies but from an element within the broadly defined environmentalist movement that helped save them in the first place: Wind farms.
Wind energy has gained such traction, whooping cranes could again be at risk—either from crashing into the towering wind turbines and transmission lines or because of habitat lost to the wind farms.
"Basically you can overlay the strongest, best areas for wind turbine development with the whooping crane migration corridor," said Tom Stehn, whooping crane coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The service estimates as many as 40,000 turbines will be erected in the U.S. section of the whooping cranes' 200-mile wide migration corridor.
"Even if they avoid killing the cranes, the wind farms would be taking hundreds of square miles of migration stopover habitat away from the cranes," Stehn said.
The birds stop every night during their migration and apparently that's when they get snagged in the towers and transmission lines.
An old Winston ad used to ask, What do you want, good grammar or good taste?, thus extending Manichean dualism to tobacco products. Whether such things are actually mutually exclusive, we might ask, what do you want, whooping cranes or renewable wind power? Tradeoffs. Everything is tradeoffs.
|2.28.08 @ 8:06AM|#
Frome the article:
"Stehn and others say no whooping cranes have been killed by a wind
turbine, though they remain concerned."
and:
"In the natural world, birds and bats have gotten used to flying
around a lot of things," Throckmorton said. "But nowhere in the
natural world is there a big spinning rotor."
me- Isn't that the kind of stuff you jump all over here? I mean, no
documented killings and a silly statement to boot.
|2.28.08 @ 8:22AM|#
In the natural world, birds and bats have gotten used to
flying around a lot of things
Correct me if I'm wrong, but whooping cranes don't have the
cognitive ability to identify an object as either being derived
from nature or otherwise.
|2.28.08 @ 8:26AM|#
If worst comes to worst, whooping crane feathers do make a fine smoke. And not at all carcinogenic.
|2.28.08 @ 8:28AM|#
Correct me if I'm wrong, but whooping cranes don't have the
cognitive ability to identify an object as either being derived
from nature or otherwise.
Which explain why they are constantly flying into trees.
|2.28.08 @ 8:35AM|#
J-D
I'm just rejecting the assumption by the speaker that whooping
cranes won't be able to adapt because the wind turbines aren't
natural
WhoopieLover|2.28.08 @ 8:37AM|#
40000 turbines vs. 266 whooping cranes.
Not exactly a fair fight, is it?
|2.28.08 @ 8:38AM|#
The service estimates as many as 40,000 turbines will be erected in the U.S. section of the whooping cranes' 200-mile wide migration corridor.
By the time the wind farms become a problem, the whooping cranes
will be able to use the NAFTA superhighway.
Julian Fondren|2.28.08 @ 8:38AM|#
"But nowhere in the natural world is there a big spinning
rotor."
Sure there is! Just go up to a wind-farm, and you'll see one. Birds
don't know better, and they don't have our prejudice of 'nature =
world shaped and perverted by every living creature except for
humans'. (If anything they should regard bird-nests with
eco-loathing and salute our wind farms as we do beaver dams.)
And -- I fail at locating an article, but you can see
a reference to it -- birds didn't restrain themselves from
exploiting a milk-cap deficiency in the UK, after they discovered
it. There aren't any milk bottles in nature, but birds taught each
other how to make the delicious froth spurt out.
Julian Fondren|2.28.08 @ 8:43AM|#
Which explain why they are constantly flying into
trees.
Oh, hilarious. Let me try:
A: I claim without evidence that birds are flying into mailboxes,
getting confused and trapped, and dying! My proof is that the
mailboxes are unnatural!
B: Say what? The birds don't care if they're 'natural' or
not.
A: Which explains why they are constantly getting trapped inside
trees!
|2.28.08 @ 9:02AM|#
There's a technological solution to this potential problem. Use a drone to guide the cranes away from the turbines. Paint it to look like a whooping crane. Voilà!
|2.28.08 @ 9:22AM|#
This is not hard, people. Large spinning turbines operate
differently than anything found in nature. The flying and
object-recognition skills a lot of birds have evolved, combined
with their tiny, little brains, don't allow them to recognize that
the turbine blade is spinning, so they don't avoid it they way they
would avoid a stationary tree.
Is this some sort of elaborate joke? This is not a difficult
concept.
Jozef|2.28.08 @ 9:23AM|#
40000 turbines vs. 266 whooping cranes.
Not exactly a fair fight, is it?
Indeed... I say we shoot 166 of the cranes to even the odds...
alisa|2.28.08 @ 9:28AM|#
Look, fun as it is for Gillespie to snark at environmentalists,
wind farms are by no means the biggest danger to cranes. Collisions
with
power lines cause more deaths. Unsurprisingly, the big issue is
water ; cranes depend on the crabs in estuaries, but river
water is diverted for dams and private use, reducing flows to crane
habitat.
Okay, got that off my chest; that said, one obvious solution is
marking the power lines (and maybe turbines) so cranes can see
them.
Greenpeace|2.28.08 @ 9:28AM|#
We need conservation, not the building of new power sources. Do you really need that plasma TV?
|2.28.08 @ 9:30AM|#
So, wind turbines have the whooping crane people fighting them on the West coast and the Kennedy clan fighting them on the East coast. Who will take up this noble cause in the Midwest?
|2.28.08 @ 9:33AM|#
I would think that with global warming running rampant, the cranes would love the cool breeze generated by all these big fans.
Josiah|2.28.08 @ 9:36AM|#
Here in Kansas people just don't want turbines in their "back yard". We'll worry about it once we get over that.
The Wine Commonsewer|2.28.08 @ 9:36AM|#
Wind turbines are a blight upon the land. Theyv'e erected these beasts even on Maui, because the smog there is so intensely brutal. Why, you can't even hoist a Pina Colada on the beach without a coughing fit brought on by the pollutants in the air from generating electricity using fossil fuels.....What? You mean that pall of smoke in the air is from burning the sugar cane fields?
Miggs|2.28.08 @ 9:37AM|#
that said, one obvious solution is marking the power lines (and maybe turbines) so cranes can see them."
lol
Josiah|2.28.08 @ 9:40AM|#
"Potential predators of the whooping crane include the black
bear (Ursus americanus), wolverine (Gulo luscus), gray wolf (Canis
lupus), red fox (Vulpes fulva), lynx (Lynx canadensis), and raven
(Corvus corax)."
We could always make the wind turbines look like giant black
bears.
LarryA|2.28.08 @ 9:41AM|#
so they don't avoid it they way they would avoid a
stationary tree
If you think trees stand still you obviously haven't been to the
part of Texas where they build wind farms. Wooosh!
We need conservation, not the building of new power sources. Do
you really need that plasma TV?
Greenpeace, weren't you going to make us all buy electric cars?
|2.28.08 @ 9:49AM|#
Larry A,
The motion of a tree being blown in the wind - which has being
happening throughout the millions of years of the cranes' evolution
- is quite different than that of a wind turbine. Tree branches in
a nice gale don't move 300 feet per second (which the tip of a
400-foot wind turbine at 16 rpm does), and they don't move 300
feet, period.
Ralph Nadar|2.28.08 @ 9:57AM|#
Alright, you got me, I admit it. I HATE those damn birds with
their constant congestive sounding coughs!
I'll come along quietly...
|2.28.08 @ 9:59AM|#
How about giant screens over the giant turbines? Then an entirely new industry will emerge - climbing windmills and peeling whooping cranes off the screen.
Jozef|2.28.08 @ 10:01AM|#
Tree branches in a nice gale don't move 300 feet per second
(which the tip of a 400-foot wind turbine at 16 rpm does), and they
don't move 300 feet, period.
I hate to be anal (actually, I sometimes enjoy it), but a 400-foot
wind turbine at 16 rpm would have the tips of its blades move at
335 feet per second. That said, the world's largest turbine has a
diameter of 413 feet; most wind turbines have a diameter of 130 to
300 feet, thus generating a speed of 109 to 250 feet per second at
the tip of their blades.
|2.28.08 @ 10:02AM|#
cranes depend on the crabs in estuaries, but river water is diverted for dams and private use, reducing flows to crane habitat.
I don't know about the rest of their range Alisa, but just FYI
damming and water use isn't the crane's problems on the Platte. The
Platte is a wide and very shallow (inches to a few feet
deep) river which is great for the cranes because they can see and
approach it easily from the air and then browse the entire width of
the river for food.
The problem on the Platte is that farming and non-native trees have
fixed the banks in place so in a lot of places the channel is
narrowing and getting deeper and if that gets too widespread the
cranes may lose their habitat. Even if it still remains shallow
enough for feeding, the trees are encroaching on the river as it
narrows and there's a worry trees could block their view of the
river from the air if it goes too far.
|2.28.08 @ 10:17AM|#
They'll evolve... or they'll die. Like humans.. and other
species.
Have a nice day.
CB
Neu Mejican|2.28.08 @ 10:30AM|#
Apparently no one read the first comment in this thread.
No deaths by wind turbine.
As for whether or not the idea that wind farms are dangerous for
birds is the result of environmentalists or not...well, there are
gullible environmentalists, but I bet the meme got started at
Exxon.
As for "trees move too" but they don't rotate...pish &
piffle.
Abdul|2.28.08 @ 10:33AM|#
My solution is just to put the turbines underground.
Oh, wait, then they'll kill moles.
|2.28.08 @ 10:41AM|#
I think more than a few people looked at what happened to the salmon runs once we dammed up the rivers and figured something like this would happen when wind farms started popping up. But that's like comparing birds...to fish.
|2.28.08 @ 10:41AM|#
Warty,
That's your solution to everything.
If you love genocide so much, why don't you just go marry it?
|2.28.08 @ 10:46AM|#
Stop trying to put honest laborers out of work, joe. Someone has to feed his kids off of crane-scrape wages.
|2.28.08 @ 10:53AM|#
SugarFree wants to crucify giant windshield-wiper manufacturers
on a giant, rotating cross of aluminum.
And also, he's teh racist.
|2.28.08 @ 10:54AM|#
If people like whooping cranes so much, why not create whooping crane farms, like turkey farms, then we could eat them.
|2.28.08 @ 11:03AM|#
Tradeoffs. Everything is tradeoffs.
Not according to Kant or natural law theorists! :)
|2.28.08 @ 11:23AM|#
SugarFree wants to crucify giant windshield-wiper
manufacturers on a giant, rotating cross of aluminum.
Crap! I been found out! Damn your eyes, joe!
OK, I'll admit that I short sell giant-windshield stock and profit
by slagging them anonymously on teh internetz.
|2.28.08 @ 12:27PM|#
Very well. I propose removing all traces of human presence
wherever whooping cranes might be. By force, if necessary.
Oil and coal are much more whooping crane-friendly.
|2.28.08 @ 12:53PM|#
Stehn and others say no whooping cranes have been killed by
a wind turbine
Look you could even know that.
Are cranes good to eat?
You damn betcha they are. They are a darker, richer meat than
chicken.
Charles|2.28.08 @ 12:57PM|#
I would think that with global warming running rampant, the
cranes would love the cool breeze generated by all these big
fans.
WIND MILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!
|2.28.08 @ 1:02PM|#
Ignore Charles, his mom was a windmill and he's still a bit touchy about the subject.
|2.28.08 @ 1:12PM|#
Seriously, what crane is going to fly into a giant black bear
mouth? Plus who is going to complain about a 100 foot wolverine in
their "back yard"?
It's the perfect solution!
|2.28.08 @ 1:27PM|#
The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) (awea.org) is very much aware of bird / turbine issues. In fact, they were one of the first organizations to accept that the claims of birds colliding with turbines were real and not an anti-wind tactic of Big Coal. The American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI) represents their committed efforts towards mitigating the conflict.
The Wine Commonsewer|2.28.08 @ 1:39PM|#
If you want a definitive answer we MUST hear from Mr Stephen Crane.
|2.28.08 @ 1:55PM|#
Come on, we know that 266 whooping cranes aren't going to be
wiped out by wind turbines.
They are going to be wiped out by land owners, who are affraid
their land might be declared protected whooping crane habitat, and
are going to shoot and bury them on site.
|2.28.08 @ 2:01PM|#
You damn betcha they are. They are a darker, richer meat
than chicken.
You know, I almost thought that last word was "children."
Which would also be true.
|2.28.08 @ 2:04PM|#
If they're smart, they'll shoot them, then dump the bodies
near a wind turbine.
...thus providing Big Coal the necessary evidence to argue that
windmills are bad because they carry firearms.
"Dodge my 300 foot-per-second blades, will you? How will you do
against a 1000 foot-per-second bullet, tough whooping crane?"
alisa|2.28.08 @ 3:33PM|#
SeanH -- thanks for the info. I think the damming issue is more
in Texas.
RC -- forgive me if I missed the irony, but do you actually eat
cranes? Is it legal to eat sandhills or something? Anyhow, I'm
pretty sure children are mostly dark meat.
|2.28.08 @ 5:55PM|#
charles,
of course that's how they work. Every time I passed the big wind
farm between Banning and Palm springs on I-10 I noted that if the
fans were spinning, it was windier than hell. When the fans were
still, there was no wind. Duh.
LarryA|2.29.08 @ 10:05AM|#
Are cranes good to eat? I bet they taste like
chicken
Nope. More like eagle.
|3.2.08 @ 11:57AM|#
"If you want a definitive answer we MUST hear from Mr Stephen
Crane."
that's Doctor Stephen Crane; who sadly is busy with
psychology matters at Arkham Asylum. Though I am sure he has a few
ideas about certain flying things and windmills.
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