Newsletter for Broadcasters
Issue # 8

Fifty Million Dead Birds: Towers as The New Profit Center

The latest FAA database lists 112,590 obstructions to aerial navigation. The FCC lists 104,703 towers in its database, so in the grand scheme of things, 110,000 towers seems like a good working number.

The US Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) estimates that a minimum of 10 billion birds breed in North America annually and that the population of migratory birds in the Fall season may be as high as 20 billion. A consulting firm hired by the FCC estimates that as many as 50 million birds are killed each year in collisions with towers. That would be about 454 birds per tower per year, or well over one a day on average. The migration of birds tends to concentrate flight into a few months a year, so one would expect many carcasses to appear each day during the migratory season.

I've been around a lot of towers for a lot of years, and I do not recall seeing a single dead bird anywhere near a tower. Recently, there were countless birds, very much alive, hanging out on the towers and guy wires of an AM and FM transmitter plant in Rhode Island. I revisited the site two days later, and I went out looking for dead birds. I found not one. Now that doesn't mean there weren't any that didn't get scavenged. The buzzards have to eat also, of course, but in all those years, I have only heard one engineer tell of as much as a single bird kill. Just about everyone I know has similar stories.

But empirical data like this is just that: a collection of stories. The consulting firm claims to have science behind it, and so the industry needs to collect hard data, and fast. There is a rulemaking proceeding under way to investigate whether this is a real problem, and, if so, what do about it. One of the consultant's recommendations is to expand the use of high-intensity strobe lighting to mark towers of all sizes. These, of course, are the very same strobe lights that neighbors hate. So this rulemaking can really paint tower proponents into a very hard corner.

One of the strongest arguments against rule changes may be the context of the alleged bird kill. Fifty million bird deaths out of ten to twenty billion represents one half to one quarter of one percent. While fifty million deaths sounds very significant, nobody can say for sure whether this represents even a noticeable loss in the context of the overall migration. How many birds are killed in collisions with mountains, valley walls, trees, and other natural features, or fall prey other hazards, is of course unknown. Using the FWS numbers, it appears that half may die from all causes every year. If that is true, then the contribution of towers is probably negligible.

This proceeding, with its awful-sounding headline, is another manifestation of an anti-tower trend that has been gaining strength over the past few years. We have the FAA currently attempting to control the frequencies used on towers. We have the environmental, archaeological, and historical challenges that led to the National Programmatic Agreement on new tower construction. We have local and distant opposition to almost every tower project. We have a tower in the east being blocked by a Native American tribe in the midwest on the grounds that they have a historical interest in the land.

Even replacement projects come under fire. In Denver, the broadcasters proposed a single common tower to replace a multitude of structures, so the visual pollution will be reduced dramatically. With the coming of digital television, the radiated power will be reduced dramatically. Yet the opponents have so far been successful in opposing the common tower proposal, and Denver still doesn't have digital TV from the new location. (Update: It took an act of Congress, but it appears that Denver will get its tower. A special federal law has been enacted that pre-empts the local zoning board.)

In the long term, towers may become a new form of common carrier. It is becoming clear that towers are resources that need to be shared in ways we have not yet imagined. Keep this in mind when you build and maintain your towers. Keep them well maintained, build them big and strong when you build them, and plan to use them in new ways to generate new profits.

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