“On a pitch-dark night thick with clouds in September 2005, it began raining birds under an 1,100-foot television tower in Madison, Wis.”
The Christian Science Monitor updates the birds vs. towers debate.
It notes that communication towers “are one of the fastest-growing parts of the problem due to the U.S. passion for cell phones and high-definition television. Among about 96,000 towers listed in a federal database, some 22,000 new towers were listed as having gone up in just the past five years.”
An appeals court recently ordered the FCC to provide more citizen input and comply with environmental laws when approving towers.
The newspaper reports the FAA is pursuing a new round of testing to determine whether alternate lighting for towers would still be effective in alerting pilots and noted that the FCC is proposing the possibility of altering its lighting scheme for towers and soliciting public comment.
(Radio World)
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