Protecting birds from windmills: answer still blows

It was a blustery day for wind power. Blues Traveler kicked off the industry’s annual conference in Chicago last night, and eighteen thousand attendees were greeted this morning by Mayor Richard M. Daley, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and the governors of five states. The German company Siemens announced it will open a $50 million plant in Hutchinson, Kansas to make wind turbines for North America. The Danish Company Vestas announced it will not scale back, as feared, its $1 billion plan to build six wind-power factories in Colorado and a research center in Houston. Citigroup responded by upgrading Vestas’s stock to a “buy.” Wind power is deemed such a good investment that authorities in Sicily began investigating mafia investment in wind farms there. And memories are still fresh of Earth Day, when President Obama cleared the way for offshore wind power and spoke in front of wind turbine towers in Iowa, predicting that in 20 years the U.S. will get 20 percent of its power from wind.
But one pesky problem continues to peck: the birds.
Windmills pack a whollop for passing birds and bats, and the 2,500-pound blades care not a twit whether they chop down a sparrow or a condor.
Guardian UK reports on one potential solution: “A wind farm in southern Texas, situated on a flight path used by millions of birds each autumn and spring, is pioneering the use of radar technology to avoid deadly collisions.”
The Spanish-owned Peñascola farm near San Antonio will use bird-detecting radar originally developed for NASA and the Air Force and shut down its windmills when it detects approaching flocks. Really? Methinks this solution inadequate for a couple of reasons—it may spare flocks but won’t do much for species of birds, including endangered raptors, that travel solo. And let’s say wind power fulfills its promise and 20 percent of the country comes to depend on it. Think the engineers will hit the off switch to save a few birds?