CATS KILL WAY MORE BIRDS THAN WIND

Tweety Was Right: Cats Are a Bird’s No. 1 Enemy
Elisabeth Rosenthal, March 20, 2011 (NY Times)

"While public attention has focused on wind turbines as a menace to birds…[Population demography of Gray Catbirds in the suburban matrix:
sources, sinks and domestic cats] in The Journal of Ornithology on the mortality of baby gray catbirds in the Washington suburbs found that cats were the No. 1 killer in the area, by a large margin.

"Nearly 80 percent of the birds were killed by predators, and cats were responsible for 47 percent of those deaths…Death rates were particularly high in neighborhoods with large cat populations…Predation was so serious in some areas that the catbirds could not replace their numbers for the next generation, according to the researchers, who affixed tiny radio transmitters to the birds to follow them. It is the first scientific study to calculate what fraction of bird deaths during the vulnerable fledgling stage can be attributed to cats…"

Data assimilated from various sources (click to enlarge)

"The American Bird Conservancy estimates that up to 500 million birds are killed each year by cats — about half by pets and half by feral felines…By contrast, 440,000 birds are killed by wind turbines each year, according to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, although that number is expected to exceed one million by 2030 as the number of wind farms grows to meet increased demand."

Sorry, but as long as wind's enemies try to use this issue against it, the brutal truth has to be told. (click to enlarge)

"The American Bird Conservancy generally supports the development of wind energy, but it argues that wind farms should be ‘bird smart’ — for example, positioned so that they do not interfere with major migration paths or disturb breeding grounds, with their power lines buried to prevent collisions…[T]he leading cause of bird deaths over all, as opposed to the catbird fledglings in the study, remain[s] collisions with buildings, windows and towers, followed by predators.

"Yet wind turbines often provoke greater outrage than cats do…Household cats were introduced in North America by European colonists; they are regarded as an invasive species and have few natural enemies to check their numbers…"