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ABSTRACT |
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TITLE: |
Mitigating the Impacts of Electric Facilities to Birds |
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AUTHOR(S): |
John M. Bridges - bridges@wapa.gov Theodore R. Anderson - tanderso@wapa.gov |
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There is a great deal of pressure on the
electric utility industry to solve all of its problems with collisions,
electrocutions and other bird interactions. Resource management agencies and
utility managers are looking for a quick fix to make the problem go away.
However, in many cases the need for speed results in solutions that are
poorly thought out, and may cause more problems than they solve. The purpose
of this paper will be to discuss the mitigative measures found in the
literature and provide a brief evaluation of their effectiveness and some of
the problems they may create. The evaluation will be based on Western’s
experience, existing literature and personal experience. For example,
collisions with man-made structures are one of the major impacts to avifauna
associated with transmission and distribution lines. Raptor silhouettes,
different color marker balls, and various "bird diverters" all work
to some degree. However, marking with the wrong color or wrong type of device
may not be effective, could be a maintenance problem or may even cause lines
to go down. Eliminating a perch site to solve an electrocution problem may
create an electrocution problem that was not there in the first place,
relocate the problem or become a maintenance nightmare. Providing nesting
platforms may adversely affect non-target sensitive species, or not be used
at all. The overall objective of the paper will be to suggest reasonableness
in the mitigative measures and provoke thought prior to implementation. Keywords: Birds, collisions, electrocutions, nesting,
impacts, mitigation, outages, perch |
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