Back to Slicers and Dicers; Biologists and Boondoggles; I Can't Make This Stuff Up

Updates

December 13, 2012: As you read the story below, consider this news today. An oil company was fined $22,500 for "a dozen" dead migratory birds in Montana, a travesty that occurred back in 2005. Meanwhile, the wind turbines have full immunity from killing eagles, hawks, bats, whooping cranes, etc.  Slicers and dicers have no redeeming value.

Original Post

First, one of the best Dickinson Press/InsideClimate News stories in a long, long time.

Federal regulators may keep biologists watching for whooping cranes near a North Dakota wind farm, even though the birds haven't been seen in the area for two years.

Basin is required to shut down its turbines if a whooping crane was spotted within a mile of the wind farm.

Basin spokesman Daryl Hill says biologists have never seen a whooping crane in the North Dakota area.

The biologists must be doing a bang-up job. North Dakota's law banning elephants from wheat fields has also been a success. 

Don, who sent me the link, suggested that the turbines will only slice and dice the first two or three whooping cranes in any flock by the time:

• the biologists spot them;
• call "911-Stop-Turbine";
• wake "Homer Simpson" at Wind Turbine Control Center (WTCC); and,
• presumably stop the (wrong) turbine before noting the error.

In fact, Department of Homeland Security, in a small federal ruling signed unnoticed by the mainstream media, requires whooping cranes to file a flight plan before taking flight.

For nocturnal flight, the same department will require the whooping cranes attach green/red LEDs to their right/left wings.

Slicers and dicers have a waiver allowing them to kill eagles, whooping cranes, and other migratory birds without penalty.

Note to newbies: other than the quote from the linked article, nothing else in this posting can be guaranteed to be accurate. The note about waivers is accurate.