Acting Commissioner Michael Copps
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street SW, Room: 8-B115
Washington, DC 20554
Dear Acting Commissioner Copps:
As one of the millions of Americans who cherish our nation's
native wild birds, I support the petition for expedited
rulemaking and other relief filed by American Bird Conservancy,
Defenders of Wildlife and National Audubon Society on April 14,
2009. I urge the FCC to take action to prevent the needless
killing of millions of migratory birds at communications towers.
These bird deaths can be prevented without affecting the
development and operation of telecommunication services and
without compromising on aviation safety.
Scientists have shown that -- especially during bad weather
conditions -- migrating birds become disoriented and trapped by
the halo of light surrounding towers using steady-burning
illumination, circling endlessly until they either collide with
the structure, collide with each other, or fall dead from
exhaustion.
Given the overwhelming scientific evidence that communications
towers kill birds, and the existence of science-based guidelines
from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on siting and operation
of these towers, it is appalling that the FCC is failing to
conduct any meaningful environmental review of tower
applications, and continues in its refusal to adopt any
meaningful regulatory changes or mitigation measures to avoid or
minimize the killing of America's birds.
The FCC should act now to take meaningful action and grant the
petition filed on April 14 to significantly reduce the millions
of bird deaths caused by communications towers. Thank you in
advance for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Peter Dorosh
President ,Brooklyn Bird Club
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
From American Birds Conservancy Enews
To: The Bird Conservation Alliance
From: Steve Holmer, American Bird Conservancy
Date: March 4, 2009
To ensure that habitat conservation is enhanced by the legislation, American Bird Conservancy has been working with the Forest Climate Working Group, a coalition of 30 forest conservation organizations, forest landowners, and timber companies, to develop consensus on the need to include measures supporting forest conservation and sustainable management. The coalition is seeking to include private forests in the global warming bill by creating incentives for projects that sequester carbon, and providing adaptation funding to mitigate impacts to forests caused by rapidly shifting climate zones. Below is a ClimateWire article that has been reprinted in the NY Times Online edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/02/19/19climatewire-timber-companies-and-environmental-groups-agr-9781.html
Energy & Environment
Search Business
Timber companies and environmental groups agree on the outlines of a climate plan
By JESSICA LEBER, ClimateWireClimateWire
The issue has been a knotty one: Cutting down domestic forests, which every year soak up 10 percent of U.S. fossil fuel emissions, could mean disaster for both climate and wildlife. The flip side of the coin is that managing them well would mean major greenhouse gas benefits.
"We need new markets to make that happen," said Robert Bonnie, vice president for land conservation and wildlife at the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the Forest-Climate Working Group members.
Almost two-thirds of U.S. forest land is owned by about 10 million private owners. The platform discusses how to maximize their climate benefits by allowing forest owners to get paid for offsetting greenhouse gas emissions within future federal cap-and-trade climate legislation, which would require major fossil-fuel burners to either reduce their own emissions or purchase carbon credits.
The 30-member coalition, which also includes timber giant Plum Creek and Defenders of Wildlife, has been discussing its platform with key Senate committees that will have a hand in shaping legislation this year.
"In the end, it was too important not to agree on core principles," said Drue DeBerry, senior vice president of conservation for the American Forest Foundation, who a year ago began working to make the groups come together.
With the forestry industry focused on project economics and conservation groups angling for environmental integrity, "it was definitely a struggle," said DeBerry.
Keeping forests at work
Planting new forests, reforestation and forest management programs could all be fodder for sequestering carbon dioxide and creating carbon offsets, the platform says. But offsets are also a complicated accounting project -- making sure the savings are real and not just a figment of paperwork can be a controversial challenge.
The coalition agreed that forest carbon offsets needed to be established from quantifiable baselines, to make sure they are "additional" and not actions the forest owner would have taken anyway.
Projects would also need to remove or sequester carbon from the atmosphere for 100 years, the platform says. If a tree is planted and then harvested for paper pulp or burned in a wildfire 10 years later, for example, those carbon savings could be lost.
Lastly, the offsets need to be quantifiable, verifiable by third parties, sustainable and have mechanisms to account for carbon "leakage."
"A marketplace wants to have good information," said Dave Tenny, president of the National Alliance of Forest Owners. "Everyone knows what a bushel of corn is. It's important for everybody to know what a unit of carbon is."
With all of these requirements, the transaction and compliance costs could be high.
"There's a dynamic tension between the environmental integrity and being able to go to scale with these projects," said DeBerry, warning against establishing so many burdens that no one participates.
The forestry and landowner community, for its part, wanted to make sure that offset projects would be flexible. A utility could, for example, sign a 10-, 20- or 30-year contract with a landowner to sequester a certain amount of carbon. Once the term is up, the utility would either have to renew it or replace those carbon credits elsewhere.
The platform also advocates for key climate change adaptation funding and incentives outside of the carbon market that would allow small owners to help reduce climate warming without the burdens of an offset project.
The devil will be in the details
The challenge, said Tenny, will be fleshing out the specifics of their proposal.. Defining how much carbon is stored in a forest, and when it is there, is a difficult prospect.
A wooden chair, for example, still stores carbon, even though it's been logged. And when forests are producing solid wood products, the trees are allowed to grow longer and soak up more carbon than they would if they were grown for paper. But, still, at some point, the chair probably goes to the landfill to decay and release its carbon. The offset amount lies somewhere between the seed and the landfill.
Another proposal to award offsets simply for not cutting down forests, or "avoided deforestation," presents other challenges. "We want to structure rules to reward landowners that are going to keep those forests as forests, but you can't just be handing out offsets to all forest landowners," said Bonnie.
Jim Wyerman, vice president for communications at the American Forest Foundation, said that family forest owners are struggling to hold onto their forests as the price of timber drops and competition rises, along with the owners' average age of 59.
The fear among many in the environmental community is that unless something is done to provide incentives to private landowners, many of those acres -- habitat, carbon stores and all -- could be lost unless they continue to be productively managed. "Those of us who are passionate within the conservation community feel like we have to get this right," said DeBerry.
Copyright 2009 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
Steve Holmer
Director of Public Relations
American Bird Conservancy
202/234-7181 ext. 216 or
202/744-6459 (cell)
sholmer@abcbirds.org
www.abcbirds.org
American Bird Conservancy operates the Bird News Network, which distributes the latest information about birds and bird conservation through videos, press releases, and news stories. Video releases are available at Bird News Network Videos or view the latest news stories and subscribe to the network's RSS feed at http://www.abcbirds.org/newsandreports/latestnews.html
To unsubscribe mail:BCAlist-unsubscribe@lists.abcbirds.org
From: Steve Holmer, American Bird Conservancy
Date: March 4, 2009
To ensure that habitat conservation is enhanced by the legislation, American Bird Conservancy has been working with the Forest Climate Working Group, a coalition of 30 forest conservation organizations, forest landowners, and timber companies, to develop consensus on the need to include measures supporting forest conservation and sustainable management. The coalition is seeking to include private forests in the global warming bill by creating incentives for projects that sequester carbon, and providing adaptation funding to mitigate impacts to forests caused by rapidly shifting climate zones. Below is a ClimateWire article that has been reprinted in the NY Times Online edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/02/19/19climatewire-timber-companies-and-environmental-groups-agr-9781.html
Energy & Environment
Search Business
Timber companies and environmental groups agree on the outlines of a climate plan
By JESSICA LEBER, ClimateWireClimateWire
The issue has been a knotty one: Cutting down domestic forests, which every year soak up 10 percent of U.S. fossil fuel emissions, could mean disaster for both climate and wildlife. The flip side of the coin is that managing them well would mean major greenhouse gas benefits.
"We need new markets to make that happen," said Robert Bonnie, vice president for land conservation and wildlife at the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the Forest-Climate Working Group members.
Almost two-thirds of U.S. forest land is owned by about 10 million private owners. The platform discusses how to maximize their climate benefits by allowing forest owners to get paid for offsetting greenhouse gas emissions within future federal cap-and-trade climate legislation, which would require major fossil-fuel burners to either reduce their own emissions or purchase carbon credits.
The 30-member coalition, which also includes timber giant Plum Creek and Defenders of Wildlife, has been discussing its platform with key Senate committees that will have a hand in shaping legislation this year.
"In the end, it was too important not to agree on core principles," said Drue DeBerry, senior vice president of conservation for the American Forest Foundation, who a year ago began working to make the groups come together.
With the forestry industry focused on project economics and conservation groups angling for environmental integrity, "it was definitely a struggle," said DeBerry.
Keeping forests at work
Planting new forests, reforestation and forest management programs could all be fodder for sequestering carbon dioxide and creating carbon offsets, the platform says. But offsets are also a complicated accounting project -- making sure the savings are real and not just a figment of paperwork can be a controversial challenge.
The coalition agreed that forest carbon offsets needed to be established from quantifiable baselines, to make sure they are "additional" and not actions the forest owner would have taken anyway.
Projects would also need to remove or sequester carbon from the atmosphere for 100 years, the platform says. If a tree is planted and then harvested for paper pulp or burned in a wildfire 10 years later, for example, those carbon savings could be lost.
Lastly, the offsets need to be quantifiable, verifiable by third parties, sustainable and have mechanisms to account for carbon "leakage."
"A marketplace wants to have good information," said Dave Tenny, president of the National Alliance of Forest Owners. "Everyone knows what a bushel of corn is. It's important for everybody to know what a unit of carbon is."
With all of these requirements, the transaction and compliance costs could be high.
"There's a dynamic tension between the environmental integrity and being able to go to scale with these projects," said DeBerry, warning against establishing so many burdens that no one participates.
The forestry and landowner community, for its part, wanted to make sure that offset projects would be flexible. A utility could, for example, sign a 10-, 20- or 30-year contract with a landowner to sequester a certain amount of carbon. Once the term is up, the utility would either have to renew it or replace those carbon credits elsewhere.
The platform also advocates for key climate change adaptation funding and incentives outside of the carbon market that would allow small owners to help reduce climate warming without the burdens of an offset project.
The devil will be in the details
The challenge, said Tenny, will be fleshing out the specifics of their proposal.. Defining how much carbon is stored in a forest, and when it is there, is a difficult prospect.
A wooden chair, for example, still stores carbon, even though it's been logged. And when forests are producing solid wood products, the trees are allowed to grow longer and soak up more carbon than they would if they were grown for paper. But, still, at some point, the chair probably goes to the landfill to decay and release its carbon. The offset amount lies somewhere between the seed and the landfill.
Another proposal to award offsets simply for not cutting down forests, or "avoided deforestation," presents other challenges. "We want to structure rules to reward landowners that are going to keep those forests as forests, but you can't just be handing out offsets to all forest landowners," said Bonnie.
Jim Wyerman, vice president for communications at the American Forest Foundation, said that family forest owners are struggling to hold onto their forests as the price of timber drops and competition rises, along with the owners' average age of 59.
The fear among many in the environmental community is that unless something is done to provide incentives to private landowners, many of those acres -- habitat, carbon stores and all -- could be lost unless they continue to be productively managed. "Those of us who are passionate within the conservation community feel like we have to get this right," said DeBerry.
Copyright 2009 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
Steve Holmer
Director of Public Relations
American Bird Conservancy
202/234-7181 ext. 216 or
202/744-6459 (cell)
sholmer@abcbirds.org
www.abcbirds.org
American Bird Conservancy operates the Bird News Network, which distributes the latest information about birds and bird conservation through videos, press releases, and news stories. Video releases are available at Bird News Network Videos or view the latest news stories and subscribe to the network's RSS feed at http://www.abcbirds.org/newsandreports/latestnews.html
To unsubscribe mail:BCAlist-unsubscribe@lists.abcbirds.org
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The deadly dangers of glass to birds
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/when-birds-collide-with-buildings/
February 3, 2009, 3:45 pm — Updated: 7:44 am -->
When Birds Collide, With Buildings
By Jennifer 8. Lee
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York TimesFor birds, the Javits Convention Center is one of the deadliest buildings in New York.
The three deadliest buildings in New York for bird collisions in New York City are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and Bellevue Hospital Center, according to the New York City Audubon Society, which keeps track of the deaths as part of Project Safe Flight in an online database.
“We collect thousands of dead birds every year, and we barely scratch the surface,” said Glenn Phillips, the society’s executive director.The Fish and Wildlife Service gave a grant to the Audubon Society to study bird collision mortality in New York City. The study, which will be released in March, examines landscape and architectural risk factors in bird deaths around the city as a model for other urban areas. Among the areas studied were the Met and the Javits Center.
“These are tragic areas that result in the death of countless areas of birds,” said Daniel Klem Jr., a ornithologist at Muhlenberg College who led the study.
Until 2007, the most lethal building by far used to be the Morgan Processing and Distribution Center, a United States Postal Service site that spans from West 28th to West 30th Street between Ninth and 10th Avenues. The building’s 440 decorative reflective panels on the south side mirrored the trees in Chelsea Park, fooling the birds into believing it was a welcoming hospitable habitat.
In one 10-week period in the fall, the Audubon Society recorded 338 dead birds around the center. And it was generally not just pigeons that bonked themselves (perhaps they are too savvy). Instead, it was dark-eyed juncos, white-throated sparrows and ruby-crowned kinglets.
An architect recommended that black vinyl be placed over each of the panels at the center, and now things are immeasurably improved.
It has not been as easy a problem to remedy with the Met, the Javits Center and Bellevue, because of a combination of aesthetics and technology. Mr. Phillips said they are in discussions with the buildings to reduce bird collision mortality.
But arguably, bird glass hazards in New York City are getting worse, not better. Glass is “in” because it is a common feature of green architecture, which means that more avian-unfriendly structures are popping up. They are particularly a hazard when they are near parks or other areas with foliage.
Or, as Mr. Phillips put it, “Glass and landscape together — bad.”
For example, the new diaphanous glass condominium building designed by Richard Meier in Brookyn’s Grand Army Plaza has raised the concern of the Audubon Society, as The New York Post noted this week.
“We’ve been planning on monitoring that building starting in the spring,” Mr. Phillips said.
In addition, the Apple Cube at the GM Building has raised concerns.
Dr. Klem estimated in a 1991 study that between 100 million and a billion birds die each year in glass collisions — that’s a huge spread, we’d like to point out — which would make the single greatest human-caused reason for bird deaths in the United States [pdf]. He said that his research since then shows that the one billion figure is conservative.
And it’s not only the architecturally tall buildings that cause problems. Rather, the most hazardous areas of all buildings are the ground level and bottom few stories — in part because those reflect the surrounding tree canopies. So birds can hit even short, squat buildings.
“The smallest piece of glass and the biggest piece of glass is an equal killer,” Dr. Klem said. “The birds behave like it’s invisible to them.”
There are some experimental solutions, none of them satisfactory from both an aesthetic and safety standpoint, from the Audubon Society point of view.
CollidEscape is a thin film that is applied to the exterior of windows — somewhat akin to those advertisements seen on buses and now in subways, only without the advertisements. Ornilux, which is made in Germany, is a glass designed to be more visible to birds, but its effectiveness is not clear.
There are other technological approaches. “The big question is, can ultraviolet light can be used? Because we can’t see it but they do,” said Dr. Klem, who added that he had been experimenting with ultraviolet light. A problem with the light, he explained, is that birds can view it as a force of attraction, like for mating and food.
“Danger is on the opposite of electromagnetic spectrum,” he said, in the reds and yellows.
New York City Audubon has just published a collection of bird-safe building guidelines, in a 55-page manual for architects and engineers.
“Honestly, the easiest solution would be for people not to build all-glass buildings,” Mr. Phillips said.
But people really like glass. In Lower Manhattan, 7 World Trade Center’s sometimes transparent-like appearance is beautiful, but that beauty is a hazard for birds. Likewise, 4 World Trade Center is also known for bird collisions.
A number of the architecturally striking buildings that are in the works, especially near the Hudson River, are also soaring and transparent.
Can City Room readers name other buildings in New York City that are not-so-bird friendly?
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Friday, January 23, 2009
Good news for birds near airports?
From the NY Post 1/23/09 edition:
FORCE IS WITH US
By TOM TOPOUSIS
Geese, beware: The US Air Force is on the way. Air Force brass yesterday offered to give New York one of its cutting-edge bird-detecting radar systems in order to prevent another airline collision like the one that forced a US Airways jet to ditch in the Hudson River last week. EXCLUSIVE: Ace Of Grace Gary Andrews, general manager at radar manufacturer DeTect Inc., said he got a call from the Air Force yesterday telling him to take a radar system slated for Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska and send it instead to New York. "That system is sitting here and it's ready to go," said Andrews, adding that the Air Force has offered to ship the system to the Port Authority at no cost. "I'm convinced that if La Guardia Airport had one of these radar systems, it would have detected the geese and alerted the controllers and pilot in time to avoid the collision," Andrews said of last week's US Airways splash-landing. DeTect's radar is already slated for a test program at Kennedy Airport, where technicians arrived yesterday to begin installing it. With a test already set for Kennedy, an aviation source said it's likely the Air Force's equipment would go to La Guardia. Officials at the Port Authority, which runs La Guardia, JFK and Newark airports, said they were unaware of the Air Force offer late yesterday. "We'll work with them to do what we need to do to expedite the program," said PA spokesman Pasquale DiFulco. Earlier yesterday, PA officials said they had asked the Obama administration to expand the federally sponsored test of the bird-detecting radar from Kennedy to La Guardia and Newark. "The request certainly has merit and we will see if the test can be expanded to include the two other airports in New York," said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters. New York's airports will be the first commercial airports in the nation to use the radar systems, designed to detect flying objects as small as birds and calculate potential collision courses with aircraft nearby. Radar now in use is designed only to track other aircraft. "The US is really moving slow on this," Andrews said of installing the bird-detecting radar that can cost from $500,000 up to $2 million for a large airport. He said airports in Germany, Canada and South Africa have already put the system in place. The bird-detecting radar has been used by the Air Force since 2003. NASA installed two DeTect systems after a vulture hit a space shuttle in 2005. Andrews said the radar has completely eliminated bird strikes at a North Carolina Air Force installation since it was installed in 2003. Before that, bird strikes averaged from four to seven each year. "We could have put this technology in place at every major airport for less than the cost of an airline crash like the one last week," he said. tom.topousis @nypost.com
To sign up for Daily Newsletter Alerts, please visit http://www.nypost.com/php/newsletter/classify_newsletter_clicks.php
FORCE IS WITH US
By TOM TOPOUSIS
Geese, beware: The US Air Force is on the way. Air Force brass yesterday offered to give New York one of its cutting-edge bird-detecting radar systems in order to prevent another airline collision like the one that forced a US Airways jet to ditch in the Hudson River last week. EXCLUSIVE: Ace Of Grace Gary Andrews, general manager at radar manufacturer DeTect Inc., said he got a call from the Air Force yesterday telling him to take a radar system slated for Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska and send it instead to New York. "That system is sitting here and it's ready to go," said Andrews, adding that the Air Force has offered to ship the system to the Port Authority at no cost. "I'm convinced that if La Guardia Airport had one of these radar systems, it would have detected the geese and alerted the controllers and pilot in time to avoid the collision," Andrews said of last week's US Airways splash-landing. DeTect's radar is already slated for a test program at Kennedy Airport, where technicians arrived yesterday to begin installing it. With a test already set for Kennedy, an aviation source said it's likely the Air Force's equipment would go to La Guardia. Officials at the Port Authority, which runs La Guardia, JFK and Newark airports, said they were unaware of the Air Force offer late yesterday. "We'll work with them to do what we need to do to expedite the program," said PA spokesman Pasquale DiFulco. Earlier yesterday, PA officials said they had asked the Obama administration to expand the federally sponsored test of the bird-detecting radar from Kennedy to La Guardia and Newark. "The request certainly has merit and we will see if the test can be expanded to include the two other airports in New York," said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters. New York's airports will be the first commercial airports in the nation to use the radar systems, designed to detect flying objects as small as birds and calculate potential collision courses with aircraft nearby. Radar now in use is designed only to track other aircraft. "The US is really moving slow on this," Andrews said of installing the bird-detecting radar that can cost from $500,000 up to $2 million for a large airport. He said airports in Germany, Canada and South Africa have already put the system in place. The bird-detecting radar has been used by the Air Force since 2003. NASA installed two DeTect systems after a vulture hit a space shuttle in 2005. Andrews said the radar has completely eliminated bird strikes at a North Carolina Air Force installation since it was installed in 2003. Before that, bird strikes averaged from four to seven each year. "We could have put this technology in place at every major airport for less than the cost of an airline crash like the one last week," he said. tom.topousis @nypost.com
To sign up for Daily Newsletter Alerts, please visit http://www.nypost.com/php/newsletter/classify_newsletter_clicks.php
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The urgency to reconnect children to nature.....
Our youth and children are losing touch with nature...with the rise of the Internet, TV, overexposed media, children have a variety of emotional and health problems affiliated with the lack of exposure to nature.Read this link about why we need to reconnect youth to nature.
http://www.childrenandnature.org/blog/
http://www.childrenandnature.org/blog/
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Conserve EPCAL! Calverton Grasslands threatened
This battle was a pledged cause of the Brooklyn Bird Club team in last May 's birdathon.The club raised 3800.00 dollars .
http://www.calvertongrasslands.org/
http://www.calvertongrasslands.org/
Friday, December 12, 2008
Loon deaths in Long Island
More on loons, both Common and Red-throated found dead on eastern end of Long Island beaches
see the link
http://www.easthamptonstar.com/dnn/Home/News/DeathofLoons/tabid/7353/Default.aspx
see the link
http://www.easthamptonstar.com/dnn/Home/News/DeathofLoons/tabid/7353/Default.aspx
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