Ask Solar Plant; Stop Killing the Birds!

Please sign and share this petition in an effort to get the Ivanpah Solar Plant in southern California to investigate while there are so many bird fatalities in this park. Birds have been catching fire in midair over the plant due to the excess solar power that seems to attract the birds but ends up killing them while flying above. This plant needs to re-evaluate their system and make changes that will not put birds in danger!

Birds that fly over the Ivanpah Solar Plant catch fire as they pass above the superheated air and are known as "streamers" due to the streams of smoke emitted as they go up in fire. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Forensics Labs states that it appears a streamer appears every two minutes, losing an estimate of from 1,000 to 28,000 bird mortality annually.

The solar park is located in the Mojave Desert near California's border with Nevada. It's new technology is solar power. This process uses thousands of mirrors across a broad swath of terrain to concentrate the energy of the sun to heat liquid flowing through tall towers to a very high temperature, which is then used to power turbines and generate electricity. Bird advocates are encouraging an investigation and changes to the potential causes of so many bird deaths.

A spokesperson stated that "If the birds enter very close to the focal point of this heliostat field, they get hit by very intensified solar radiation, by a factor of 500 or so. If they stay there for a couple of seconds, the heat is so immense that they often die." Of course, one of the companies running the plant denies the allegations that the streamers witnessed are birds.

However, the spokesperson continues to add that "Careful investigation is required, because that's not acceptable for a technology killing thousands of birds a year. This is very surprising; -we never heard about this massive number of birds dying." He adds that "Numerous birds fly through the region, he said: "There are a lot of avian stopovers on the migratory pathway through the desert; it is on the Pacific flyway."

The speculation is that the bright light generated at Ivanpah is attracting insects, which in turn attracts birds as a potential food source, a factor simply not considered in the project's development. The plant is now understanding the problem and trying to determine what can be done to prevent further bird mortality again.

Some suggestions by bird expert Brunner included audio or visual measures to scare birds away at Ivanpah, or possibly shutting down operation during migration periods of the year. "We don't want to stop wind and solar, of course, we want more of it ; but we want it in the right places, and we want it to be developed and operated to avoid or minimize the impact on birds. Distributed generation on the already-built environment really can reduce a lot of these impacts to wildlife." For more information, read http://www.dw.de/mass-bird-fatalities-at-solar-park-cause-concern/a-17871219?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf

Something needs to be done to ensure the generators and solar power in such a manner that birds are save from immortality. Please sign and share this petition in an effort to get the Ivanpah Solar Plant in southern California to investigate while there are so many bird fatalities in this park. Birds have been catching fire in midair over the plant due to the excess solar power that seems to attract the birds but ends up killing them while flying above. This plant needs to re-evaluate their system and make changes that will not put birds in danger!