A couple of years ago we finished relocating a three-tower AM station to a site on a flood plain of the Minnesota River, which is a major migratory flyway. During some of the hearings leading up to the actual construction several environmental folks said that there would be major bird kill numbers if it was allowed to be built. (One woman referred to the installation as a "curtain of death.") Well, we got it built, but part of the agreement was that we would spend $20,000 to hire an independant group to do a one-year study after it was built to actually go out and count the dead birds piled up around the towers. One year later the count was...zero. They even planted dead birds around the towers to try and get a handle on whether any were being carried away by predators. None were. So when (and it will happen) some big migratory birds do crash into our 400 foot tall "curtain of death" I figure it'll just be the stupid ones, once again proving that Darwin was right. Randy Greenly rgreenly@mpr.org 8-12-99 |