Free Republic

That rapidly growing wind power development kills birds in ever increasing numbers is clear. That it also kills whales and other marine mammals is becoming clear. So the policy question is how much killing is enough, before we stop killing more? This question seems not to be asked. The stampede to build huge amounts of wind power, on land and at sea, is potentially devastating to a great many species. Our focus has been on the growing threat to whales and other marine mammals from offshore industrial wind. But this is just part of a much deeper pattern of runaway...

HARRISBURG, PA - Wildlife health experts from the Wildlife Futures Program (WFP) at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine (Penn Vet) and officials from the Pennsylvania Game Commission are investigating more than 70 general public reports of songbirds that are sick or dying due to an emerging health condition that is presently unknown. As of July 1, 2021, reports from the public chronicle both adult and young birds exhibiting signs of the condition. The most common clinical symptoms include discharge and/or crusting around the eyes, eye lesions, and/or neurologic signs such as falling over or head tremors. Affected...

Stephen Maciejewski dropped to a knee on a Center City sidewalk Wednesday morning and gently scooped up a yellow-billed cuckoo that had smashed into a skyscraper and died on its way to Central America or the West Indies. “This probably happened yesterday,” said Maciejewski, a 71-year-old retired social worker and volunteer for Audubon Pennsylvania. He labeled a plastic bag with the time, date, and location, tucked the slim migrator into it, and continued his rounds. Maciejewski gets emotional when he speaks about all the birds he finds, but nothing, he says, prepared him for what happened Friday. “So many birds...

The birds were initially spotted in the sky by a passer-by, who returned to the road around an hour later and found them all dead. "My gut instinct is that they have been poisoned, but we don't know. It is hard to say really." The couple have contacted the police and the Animal and Plant Health Agency who they say are looking into the incident. "We are keen to ensure the incident is investigated by the authorities, but for the time being it is important not to speculate on the cause."

Feathers at the foot of a wind turbine. Bird droppings at the base of a solar panel. A coroner could use these signs to establish the cause of mass bird death. And a novelist could pen a murder mystery titled: Death by Renewable Energy.In 1969, there were far more active coal plants in America than today. However, in 1969, there were also 2.9 billion more birds in America. In the last decade alone, 289 coal plants have closed—a 40 percent reduction. Meanwhile, wind turbines and solar panels are going up at a record pace and scientists are reporting a “full-blown...

The Obama administration is refusing to turn over documents related to enforcement of environmental laws at wind farms where dozens of eagles and other protected birds have been killed, House Republicans charged Wednesday. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said the Fish and Wildlife Service has engaged in a “deliberate slow rolling of documents and answers” for nearly a year. Hastings is chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, which has been seeking to compel the wildlife agency turn over internal documents related to its enforcement of laws protecting eagles and other birds. An Associated Press investigation last year revealed that the...

It's not the "aflockalyptic" fallout from a secret US weapon lab as some have theorized. But the government acknowledged Thursday that it had a hand in one of a string of mysterious mass bird deaths that have spooked residents in Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, South Dakota, and Kentucky in the last month. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) took responsibility for hundreds of dead starlings that were found on the ground and frozen in trees in a Yankton, S.D., park on Monday. The USDA's Wildlife Services Program, which contracts with farmers for bird control, said it used an avicide poison...

The recent mysterious deaths of birds and fish are causing alarm among naturalists around the world. Birds are literally falling dead out of the sky, and fish are washing up dead on shores and rivers across North America and around the world. The reaction from the mainstream media seems strangely subdued, as if they're all just blowing this off as some unexplained quirk about the natural world that should be largely ignored. NaturalNews readers think differently. We are concerned when thousands of dead birds fall out of the sky for no apparent reason. The sky itself may not be falling,...

Witnesses in Italy said thousands of turtle doves fell from the sky, Wednesday, Jan. 5, following a series of incidents in the United States and Sweden. According to residents in the town of Faenza, birds were falling from the sky like “little Christmas balls." The reports are similar to witness accounts from New Year’s Eve when Arkansas partygoers took cover as 4,000 red-winged blackbirds and starlings pinged cars, rooftops and roadways. Unlike birds that died in other areas of the world, the turtle doves were found with a strange blue stain on their beaks. “We have no idea,” a witness...

A TV station in the East Texas town of Tyler reports that hundreds more dead birds have been discovered along the sides of a highway bridge. This news adds fresh fuel to a growing conundrum over the cause of hundreds of thousands of avian deaths in localities thousands of miles apart. The station, KLTV, acknowledges that around 200 birds were found dead this morning on state highway 155. The birds, identified as American coots or mud-hens, are the first of this species to be cited in the recent spate of deaths. As with previous cases, the cause of death is...

(CBS/AP) LABARRE, La. - State biologists are trying to determine what killed an estimated 500 birds that littered a quarter-mile stretch of highway in Pointe Coupee Parish. The birds included red-winged blackbirds and starlings. The birds were found Monday along Louisiana Highway 1, about 300 miles south of Beebe, Ark., where more than 3,000 blackbirds fell from the sky three days earlier.