The Marietta Daily Journal – Tybee considers birds fate if turbine is built

TYBEE ISLAND — Endangered piping plovers blend into the background of sandy beaches like Tybee’s, where these small shorebirds are known to visit.

First decimated by the use of their feathers in women’s hats in the late 1800s, plovers have since suffered from having to compete with humans for beach space. Now only 60 or so breeding pairs remain in the smallest of their three known populations.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has identified global warming and wind turbines as emerging threats to these birds.

The paradox of that pair of threats is not lost on Tim Keyes, a wildlife biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources who is worried that a proposed wind turbine on Tybee would harm plovers that migrate through or winter there.

“No need to point out the irony that one potentially ameliorates the other,” Keyes wrote to the wind turbine’s biggest proponent, Tybee council member Paul Wolff.

Nor is the irony of Keyes’ concerns lost on Wolff, a clean-energy advocate whose home is powered with solar panels. Wolff wants Tybee to lead the way with wind energy and erect the 150-foot, 50-kilowatt turbine as a model for other coastal communities.

via The Marietta Daily Journal – Tybee considers birds fate if turbine is built.