Subject: [Tweeters] Storks and power lines
Date: Nov 4 18:33:46 2005
From: Paul Webster - paul.webster at comcast.net


In Germany high voltage powerlines used to be built differently than in this
country. If I remember it right, the towers were insulated from the ground,
but the wires weren't insulated from the towers. This allowed a lot of
storks and other birds that lit on the towers to get fried. Perhaps
something has been done to make them less hazardous for birds. There were
other problems, too. Many of the German rivers were dredged and the banks
scoured to improve navigation and for flood control, and native grasses by
and in the river channels were replaced with a variety German
conservationists named ironically "Einheitsgras" -- European Unity Grass
that had been approved by the bureaucrats in Brussels. The decline of the
White Stork was the more depressing to the conservation community because
the stork was thought to be THE bird that had adapted its ways best to live
around human beings. I've seen a few storks at Kaysersberg in the Alsace,
now a famous town because of its nesting storks, but the days when most
German towns had a few pairs of storks nesting on rooftop platforms are
gone.

Paul Webster
Seattle
paul.websterATcomcast.net

----- Original Message -----
From: <vogelfreund at comcast.net>
To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 2:09 AM
Subject: [Tweeters] re birds and power lines


> November 4 '05
>
> This is just a tidbit about birds & powerlines;
>
> When I was stationed in Germany the last time ('71-'75 + 2 yrs more as a
> civilian), there was major concern for the White Stork in this regard. It
> seems to have been the main reason that they couldn't be successfully
> reintroduced to areas where they had disappeared.
>
> Phil Hotlen
> Bellingham, WA
> ----------------------------------------
>
>