Ivanpah Solar Project Has a Bad Burned Bird Problem
A solar energy project in the California desert seems to have injured and killed a surprising number of birds in the first two and a half weeks of September, according to data furnished to a state agency that went public Monday. And more than half of those injuries have been linked by project biologists to the facility's concentrated solar energy.
Between September 3 and September 19, workers at BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert's Ivanpah Valley recorded 20 dead birds found on the project site near Primm, Nevada, 13 of which showed signs of scorching and singeing consistent with injuries from concentrated "solar flux."
As ReWire reported last month, Ivanpah workers found an injured peregrine falcon on site September 6. According to the new data from BrightSource, the falcon's injuries were consistent with overexposure to solar flux. A common yellowthroat was found alive with burn injuries on the site on September 5 and shipped to a rehab facility. The BrightSource data doesn't mention the eventual fate of either bird, but U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Jane Hendron confirmed to ReWire last month that the falcon succumbed to its injuries two days later.
The document, a spreadsheet posted by the California Energy Commission on its website Monday, was provided by BrightSource on September 20. It thus does not include any mortalities recorded in the last 10 days of the month. Ivanpah staff recorded 71 injured or killed birds on site from January 3 through September 19, meaning that approximately 29 percent of the project's recorded bird mortalities for the year so far took place in the first two and a half weeks of September.
http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/solar/concentrating-solar/ivanpah-solar-has-a-bad-burned-bird-problem.html
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