Monday, May 20, 2019

Bird deaths due to olive harvesting a bigger problem than wind turbines

If you are worried about bird deaths due to wind turbines, maybe you should be more worried about the significantly higher bird deaths due to the European olive harvest.
A report in Nature estimates around 2 million birds a year die in the olive harvest in Spain and Portugal alone (figures for other major olive producers like France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, etc, are not available). The issue arises from the suction machinery used to harvest the olives, particularly from October to January, which coincides with the major migration patterns of songbirds like warblers, thrushes, wagtails and finches. The harvesting is carried out at night, supposedly because night-harvested olives taste better, which also happens to be when the birds are asleep in the olive trees.
Should we be worried about bird deaths due to wind turbines? Possibly, although nothing like to the extent Donald Trump claims. Should we be worried about bird deaths due to olives? Oh, yeah.

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