Solar plant near Calif.-Nevada border fries passing birds to death
Source: Associated Press
Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant's concentrated sun rays — "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.
Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one "streamer" every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator's application to build a still-bigger version.
The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.
The deaths are "alarming. It's hard to say whether that's the location or the technology," said Garry George, renewable-energy director for the California chapter of the Audubon Society. "There needs to be some caution."
Read more: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014/aug/18/solar-plant-near-nevada-border-scorches-birds-mid-/
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and do it safely, right? Too much to ask for, isn't it? 
California's deserts are not sterile wastelands, and they are teeming with wildlife. The Mojave has huge numbers of birds, including hawks, owls, ravens and jays. I visit Joshua Tree on a halfway regular basis, and there is no shortage of birds in the sky.
The Mojave isn't the Sahara. It isn't a huge expanse of dead, sterile sand waiting for humans to come along and exploit it. It's a complex natural landscape covered with both plants and animals.
