State: Birds fall prey to signal towers

Every fall, 100-million birds from across the eastern United States migrate south across the Gulf of Mexico, in search of warmer weather in South America. Every spring they return, making a second arduous journey across the water.

On both trips, they collide with a man-made fence. Nearly 6,000 communications towers, broadcasting television and radio signals as well as providing cellular telephone service, line the coast.

Attracted by the towers' flashing lights, the disoriented birds wind up flying in circles until they smack into the structures, their guy wires or the ground.

Across the country, there are more than 70,000 communications towers, and new ones are being built at the rate of 5,000 a year. Federal officials say they are to blame for killing at least 5-million birds a year, and perhaps as many as 50-million. Bobolinks, bitterns, buntings, gulls, warblers, sparrows and red-cockaded woodpeckers have fallen victim.

The problem is sufficiently serious that last month three environmental groups petitioned the Federal Communications Commission for a moratorium on any new towers within 100 miles of the Gulf Coast, from the southern tip of Texas across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle down to Tampa Bay.

The moratorium would last until there is a full-fledged study of how so many bird deaths is affecting their species, the petition says.

Although environmental groups have tried before to block individual towers, this marks the first time anyone has tried to halt construction of all towers across an entire region.

So far the FCC has not responded to the petition filed by the American Bird Conservancy, the Friends of the Earth and the Forest Conservation Council. Spokeswoman Maribeth McCarrick would say only that the agency is "trying to determine how to deal with it, but I wouldn't want to speculate about how the commission is going to handle it."

But while it does that, the commission will continue handing out permits for new towers like the one in rural Franklin County that has Bob Henderson sounding an alarm.

Henderson, 61, of Tallahassee is a former Leon County commissioner who has spent countless hours tracking migrating warblers through the wilds of Franklin and Wakulla counties. He has seen more towers pop up along the coast, particularly in rural areas where no one is likely to oppose them. Florida has one of the highest tower densities per square mile in the nation.

"There is no reason we need to build all these towers with all these guy wires," said Henderson, who is one of the avid birdwatchers whose names are attached to the FCC petition.

To hear the environmental groups tell it, the only way new tower permits could be easier to get is if they were offered as Crackerjack prizes.

The FCC "is just not geared to deal with these kinds of environmental questions," said Gerald Winegrad of the American Bird Conservancy.

Federal agencies are supposed to comply with the law requiring environmental impact statements. Instead, the FCC says that virtually all towers "have no significant effect" on the environment.

When the Forest Conservation Council asked to see the scientific studies the FCC used to make that determination, all the FCC turned over were "materials related to the effects of radio frequency radiation on humans," according to the petition.

Federal law says it's illegal to kill a single migratory bird, but no tower owner or builder has ever been charged with that crime. However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has begun notifying tower applicants of the possibility.

Last year, for instance, federal wildlife officials wrote to a company planning a tower in Duval County that it would likely kill birds, adding that "mortality of migratory birds caused by a cell tower may be a violation of the Migratory Birds Treaty Act."

The federal wildlife agency became alarmed about the spread of towers after an incident in Kansas in 1998. One foggy night, 10,000 Lapland longspurs hit a 420-foot TV tower and died.

In November 1999, the agency's director, Jamie Rappaport Clark, wrote to warn the FCC about the need to comply with federal law protecting migratory birds. With so many towers being built, Clark wrote, the number of birds that would be killed "could significantly affect populations of many species."

Clark urged the FCC to launch a study of the environmental impact, but FCC Chairman William Kennard said no. Although the commission is "very concerned" about the problem, Kennard wrote back in March 2000, "there is very little study and research" on the issue and "the FCC does not have the requisite expertise in, and does not have the authority or the appropriations necessary to fund basic generic research on, this issue."

Three months ago, though, a trio of industry leaders -- from the National Association of Broadcasters, the Personal Communications Industry Association and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association -- wrote to Congress to push for money to finance such an extensive study.

"We are optimistic that a cost-effective remedy to this potential problem will be found with this basic research," they wrote.

There have been quite a few studies already, although none of them have produced a solution. One of the most extensive took place near Tallahassee. From 1955 to 1980, every morning just before dawn, researchers with Tall Timbers Research Station dutifully counted all the dead birds they found at the foot of the 1,100-foot WCTV tower.

During those 25 years, they found 42,384 birds from 189 different species lying on the ground. After one overcast night, more than 4,000 dead birds were found at the base of the tower.

Safe passage through Florida and the rest of the Gulf Coast is vital for migratory birds, particularly songbirds, said Al Manville, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who has been leading federal studies of the tower problem for the past four years.

"It's a critical stopover area," he said. "Many of them, when they fly back in the springtime, they land back on the beach completely exhausted. If the first thing they see when they get there are those lights, that can spell disaster."

Manville suggested that industry leaders dig into their own pocketbooks to solve the tower problem before hitting up the taxpayers for help.

"The amount Verizon spends for one 60-second TV commercial," he said, "could pay for better than a year's worth of research."

-- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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