Bird Brained

Solar plants are nothing new, but most of them use an array of photovoltaic panels to collet sunlight and convert it to energy. Ivanpah is different. It uses mirrors the size of garage doors to reflect light from the sun and redirect it at three big towers, which do the converting. Ivanpah has 170,000 of the huge mirrors, which are called heliostats, because they needed a cool sounding name for them.

The problem is that the light attracts bugs, and the bugs attract birds that eat bugs, and when the birds fly through the light beams between the mirrors and the towers, they pretty much spontaneously combust. The beams of light are basically laser beams of heat, sort of like the ones Luke Skywalker shot out of his X-Wing Starfighter in Star Wars. They can reach temperatures of up to 900 degrees, and when the birds fly through the beams their wings catch fire. Workers at Ivanpah call them Streamers, because of the smoke trails they leave as they fall to the ground.

This situation is a major dilemma for the environmentalists, who want the world to stop using fossil fuel so badly they just about wet their environmentally friendly pants every time they see a Chevy Suburban. But life is full of tradeoffs, and one of those is that there’s really no form of energy, no matter how clean, that doesn’t cost the planet something. In this case, it’s birds.

It doesn’t help that the birds being incinerated by the flockfuls are not just your average, garden variety starlings and grackles, for the most part. Ivanpah Solar Plant is built smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Flyway, which is a major migratory route for a lot of birds, including many protected species. Ivanpah may have killed Toucan Sam, for all we know. You never see him around anymore, after all.

Not that this is really anything new, of course. Those huge windmills that were supposed to be another glorious source of clean power are deadly on the avian world. And a lot of the 100,000 birds killed annually by the windmills are eagles and other protected species. The only thing that kills more birds than windmills is domestic cats, which is one of the many reasons all cats should be kept in cages. Or at least kept out of my wife’s flowerbeds. Cages would be better.

But it gets even worse at Ivanpah, for the bunny huggers. In an effort to keep the endangered desert tortoises from wandering, slowly, into the facility and being harmed, a fence was built all the way around the plant. I’m vague on what harm could come to the tortoises from crawling around underneath the mirrors, but I guess we don’t have to worry about that anymore. Except the fence makes it a lot easier for coyotes to kill roadrunners. They run into the fence and, beep beep, ol’ Wile E. has them for lunch.

And that’s always been the problem behind saving the world, I guess. Which world deserves to be saved? If you prevent the coyote from getting the rabbit, the bunny is saved but the yote goes hungry, and may die. You can’t win without losing.

To help out the roadrunners, Ivanpah plans to install ‘roadrunner doors’ in the fence, so they can escape when they’re chased. I guess they’ll put up signs to show the roadrunners where the holes are, or something. Maybe a bowl of birdseed would help. With a little sign that says ‘bird seed.’ Beep beep.

Either that, or they could hire Randy Johnson to throw baseballs at the coyotes. If they do that, someone please send me a video . . .

Kendal Hemphill is an outdoor humor columnist and minister who doesn’t like your cat. No offense. Write to him at [email protected]