I think the issue is that appropriate scientific review should be done -- on *any* project which could affect the environment, wildlife, propery values etc. It does not mean that opponents of a project should have the ability to kill it based just on their unsupported opinions or the loudness of their arguments. But trying to exempt projects from environmental review is to me, as an environmental scientist, a "red flag" -- my first question is, what are you trying to hide?

Not to get onto the cat thread (PLEASE!), but a lot of research seems to show that *most* species killed by cats are the commoner resident birds which live close to human habitation (still not nice, of course!) , while the majority of birds killed by structure collisions (which some biologists feel is a much more serious issue than previously thought) are nocturnal neotropical migrants, many of which are undergoing serious population declines for a variety of reasons.

Thus MOS's position...

Gail Mackiernan
Silver Spring, MD

-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Joe McDaniel <>
> I would agree that a review of such projects is very desirable. The problem is 
> that some opponents of wind turbine projects in western Maryland (and other 
> places, I suspect) are so vocal and single-minded about being "anti" rather than 
> consensus-building that the tendency is for the lawmakers to bypass the review 
> process. It seems very reasonable to shutdown the turbines for a couple of weeks 
> at night during migration and other mitigating actions. 
> 
> One thing that gets lost seems to be that the turbines kill something like 3 
> birds out of 100,000 versus something like 20,000 kills by feral cats (my 
> numbers are from memory and may be wildly in error but the orders of magnitude 
> are approximately correct, I think).
> 
> Best,
> 
> Joe McDaniel
> Grantsville, Md (near the proposed site in Garrett County, MD)