For the Birds Radio Program: Tower Kills
It is a fact that towers kill birds. The question is what we’re prepared to do about it. Arguing that each tower is necessarily more important than bird lives, or that the research to minimize kills is too expensive, are reasonable approaches in debating the issue. Lying about the facts is not.
Transcript
Last week a friend of mine who works for the City of Duluth received an anonymous comment written on a copy of some meeting minutes. The minutes had a section about the city’s cell phone contracts and local cell phone towers, with a line that “Eventually phones will be by satellite, which at this time is very expensive. Besides improving reception and range for cell phones, they will also eliminate the need for towers, which kill many migrating birds every year.”
The anonymous comment said, “Where did this come from? For your information, this has not been proven and was the subject of intense debate between the first carrier to put up equipment on a city site and the council. Information was provided that this was not a scientifically legitimate concern in siting cellular antennas or approval or disapproval of tower requests. It is a tact used by activists to attempt to stop any tower development.”
This comment is patently untrue. Ornithologists have accepted for many decades that towers and other tall lighted structures attract nocturnal migrants, such as warblers, thrushes, and tanagers, and the resulting collisions kill them, sometimes in huge numbers. A book published by the US Department of Interior in 1966 had a long section about one television tower in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, that killed 20,000 birds on a single foggy night, September 20, 1957, and killed 35,000 birds on a foggy September weekend in 1963. The article also talked about many other bird kills that have happened at towers. The information has been out there for a long time, and continuing long-term studies have verified that the problem is ongoing.
On September 14, 2000, the US Fish and Wildlife Service released guidelines for the Siting, Construction, Operation and Decommissioning of Communications Towers. In it, they stated that communications towers kill 4 - 5 million birds every year. So it’s an indisputable fact that towers are lethal to birds.
So there is no meaningful debate about whether or not towers kill birds. The facts are in about that. The issue is what we should do about it. Obviously towers have very important uses for us humans. Radio, TV, and cell phones have become basic needs for many Americans—this very radio program broadcasts from a communication tower. Certainly, recognizing the fact that birds die at towers is no reason to stop communications.
But perhaps if people were aware of how lethal towers are to birds, we would demand government or communications companies to conduct research on tower designs that could minimize kills, and require towers to be built with the safest methods. At this point, we know that red lights are worse than white lights for attracting birds. The problem is that people living near towers are far more bothered by white lights than red. But no one has done any systematic research into other color possibilities. Perhaps there is a color of light that doesn’t bother people much and doesn’t attract birds, but at this point there is no funding to figure this out.
I can understand the communications industry or taxpayers not wanting to foot the bill for research into making towers safer for migrating birds. That is the subject for debate. But misrepresenting the facts is simply inexcusable. It is a fact that these towers kill millions of birds every year. What are we prepared to do? I don’t know, but lying about the bird deaths is not the right way to go about finding a solution.