The Environment Report

City officials in Holland, Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor are asking for a little help from residents. They're asking people to start watering trees along city streets – the ones between the curb and the sidewalk. 

Kerry Gray is an Urban Forestry & Natural Resources Planner with the City of Ann Arbor.

"Most of the trees are currently really under a lot of stress.  So we would obviously love people to water the street trees but we’d also love them to pay attention to the trees on private property as well."

She says trees need water immediately if you see wilting or curling leaves and if leaves or needles are dropping off.  Newly planted trees are especially at risk.

Here are some guidelines the Ann Arbor city foresters recommend for watering trees:

• The morning hours are usually the best time to water
• Slow, deep soakings are better than frequent light watering for both newly planted trees and established trees
• For newly planted trees and small trees up to 4", a good watering is 10 gallons per inch of tree diameter applied in the mulched area around the tree, once per week.  A 3" diameter tree would need 30 gallons of water (3" x 10 gallons).  Newly planted trees should be watered weekly during the first 3 growing seasons.
• For established medium trees (5"-12"), a general guideline for watering during prolonged dry periods is 10 gallons of water for every 1 inch diameter, three times per month.  For example, an 8" diameter tree will need 80 gallons of water.  To water, place a sprinkler or soaker hose in the dripline of the tree.  The dripline is the outer extent of the branch spread.  Move the sprinkler/hose around to ensure that all the roots in the dripline are watered. 
• For large trees (greater than 13"), 15 gallons of water for every inch of diameter, two times per month during prolonged dry periods. A 14" tree would need 210 gallons of water. To water, use the method described above for medium trees. For established trees, do not water within 3 feet of the trunk; this can lead to root rot.
• In normal precipitation years, mother nature provides the water an established tree needs and supplemental watering is typically not necessary.   

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This is the Environment Report.

A lot of us in Michigan are passionate about going up north.                                                                                

“I remember the good old days when my dad would pack us up in the station wagon and head up north. It was 80 acres in the middle of nowhere …I’m heading to Petoskey on Wednesday and on Thursday or Friday to Whitefish Point and Tahquamenon Falls…Tomorrow I’m making my annual pilgrimage to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.”

Those are comments from Facebook fans, answering the question, “Anyone headed up north this weekend?” But where is up north & why do we love going? Reporter Kyle Norris takes a look:

The definition of “up north” is incredibly personal. It has to do with where you’re from and where you’re headed. But there seems to be a general consensus, of where it begins, at least for people in the Lower Peninsula.

"In Michigan I think the north begins right about halfway across mitten—or you can be a little more exact and say Highway 10. Somewhere between Claire & Luddington."

That’s nature writer Keith Taylor.  He says the world around you begins to change quickly…once you cross that line.

"You suddenly start seeing white pines and white birches. So the trees change."

Taylor says people have always craved a landscape that’s different from the hustle and bustle of their everyday lives. For people who lived in Detroit in the ’20s & ’30s… going “up north” just meant traveling one county over. These days “up north” usually means driving a couple of hours in the car. Taylor says we’re lucky that in Michigan there are a lot of places close by.

“It’s the interesting thing about our state there’s the major industries to the south employing all those people and we’re so close to the edge of the wilderness.”

Denise & David Frick have a little cottage near Kalkaska. They love going up north because of the beauty & peacefulness.

Denise: "Even when you’re up there the air is even cleaner, you can feel the difference as soon as you arrive. Of course it’s a vacation property—so there’s no mail up there, there’s no work, there’s no desk, you go up there to relax."

David: "And we have a TV up there that gets like two-and-a-half stations, with rabbit ears."

When the Fricks get ready to go up north from their home in Ann Arbor… it’s a low-key affair.

David: "We can look in the cooler right now.' KN: 'Yeah, I wanna know what’s in the cooler. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be cold to be in the cooler?'"

David: "No! The cooler contains black pepper which we ran out of. Hershey Bars, for making ‘smores. Some belts for a drill press and an extension cord."

The Fricks say their idea of a good time up north is sitting around and looking at the lake. Writer Keith Taylor says being outside is another appealing aspect.

"One could be confronted by things that appear just a little more wild, a little bit around the edge. You could get lost in woods, although probably not forever. You might run into a bear. And that would change things, that would add a little bit of excitement without really, really threatening your life."

The concept of going “up north” is not unique to Michigan or even to America. But we have the Great Lakes. And as Keith Taylor says, there’s nothing like all that fresh water, anywhere in the world.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

There’s so much to know about what’s happening in the world around us, and that information gives us insights into patterns and changes that could have a big impact on our lives. But all of that requires a lot of data – and somebody has to go out and get it. Meg Cramer met up with one of those people:

Chris Kort and I are standing by the curb on McDougall St on the north side of Detroit. We’re looking at a tree. Kort is tapping the screen of the tablet computer he’s carrying, he marks where the tree is, then adds details like its size, species, and health.

When we finish with this tree, we move on to the next one.

“I try not to miss anything, I’ve got to get every single tree. Never ending process.”

Kort does this all day long, walking up and down Detroit streets, counting every tree on city property.

“Since March I have surveyed 13,468 trees. And counting.”

The data from this survey will go to the city, the state, and scientists at the US Forest Service. It will tell a story about what’s happening to trees in the city.

A database like this has to be built manually by people like Chris Kort. Tree by tree. Kort is like the human version of the Google street view car – roving up and down blocks and adding to his map. He notices details that most people miss.

“I’ve actually been collecting pennies on the sides of the roads for, like four months. I cashed in 2,200 pennies yesterday. People just don’t pick them up anymore apparently. Ooh, we’ve got a different tree here. We’ve got an elm tree!”

Mostly, researchers are trying to nail down the basics, like what kinds of trees are in the city, and how many there are. But they’re also testing a new survey method, a survey that measures damage caused by invasive species.

That’s because Detroit is where the Emerald Ash Borer was first discovered back in 2002. It probably arrived in the wood of untreated shipping palettes. Now, it’s all over the Midwest. The insect infests and kills Ash trees.

“I would say we’ve surveyed maybe 8,000 ash trees since I’ve been here. Every single one of them is dead or dying.”

Kort is a surveyor for Davey Resource Group. The company worked with the US Forest Service to develop the Insect Pest Detection protocol. The Detroit tree inventory is the first time it’s being used.

Surveyors like Chris Kort note damage from all kinds of things – including invasive species.

Researchers will unpack that data to identify new trends, and learn more about old ones. Like how the Emerald Ash Borer spread through the city and beyond.

Chris Kort shows me some of the symptoms he’s looking for on a dying ash tree. First, there’s the hole where the insect crawled out, it’s shaped like an upper case “D.”

“You can see the D shaped exit holes, really obvious.”

And the galleries, grooved doodles on the trunk.

“So in between the bark and the tree this bug is crawling around, making this indentation I would call it, where it chewed away so it can move.”

One of the goals of the new pest detection protocol is to learn more about invasions at all stages so that researchers – and communities – can do a better job finding them before they get this far along.

David Nowak is a project leader with the U.S. Forest service.

“Nationwide, there’s billions of trees in urban areas, but in cities there’s often millions of trees.”

“But you also have millions of people. The people if they’re educated can start looking at some of these things, they can be detectives – if you will – or detectors of these insects and diseases when they come in. And maybe provide that information to experts to help determine what’s happening.”

Once the Detroit database is set up it can be monitored and updated by people in the communities.

The hope is that this relationship between communities and researchers will mean a quicker response for groups that are trying to keep invasive species in check.

For the Environment Report, I’m Meg Cramer.

This story was informed by the Public Insight Network.

Washington and California recently adopted laws that ban all but traces of copper in automotive brake pads by the year 2021. The two states say the metal gets into watersheds and hurts endangered salmon. The decision could change the way brakes are made around the world, as Tracy Samilton reports:

Copper is a great material for brakes. It's durable, and it absorbs heat and noise. But it comes with an environmental price. Ian Wesley is with the Washington State Department of Ecology.

Each time a driver uses their brakes, a small amount of the material gets worn off, and when it rains, that can be washed into streams and rivers.

About a third of the copper in some watersheds in California and Washington State comes from brakes. And copper is not good for salmon, because it wreaks havoc with their ability to smell.

Salmon release a pheromone when they perceive a threat. Other salmon react to the scent by dropping to the bottom of the water and staying there, very still.

"When they do that, it helps them avoid the predators, but if there's even very low levels of copper in the water, they can't smell this pheromone, and they continue to swim around kind of oblivious to the danger that's nearby."

The phased-in ban by the two states will likely affect everyone. That's partly because it's just too expensive to develop a product for one or two states.

Terry Heffelfinger is head of product engineering for Affinia Global Brake. He says European car companies still use an older style of brake that doesn't use copper. But many Americans don't like them, because they're noisy.

"They also make your wheels dust more than ceramic materials."

Heffelfinger says it will take time to develop a copper-free brake as quiet and dust-free as the kind that's being phased out.

By the way, while they were banning copper in brakes, California and Washington also banned asbestos in brakes. A few non-domestic car companies still use asbestos brakes here. That ban will take effect in just three years. For the Environment Report, I'm Tracy Samilton.

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If you’re a duck, this is a good news, bad news story.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service takes surveys of the ten most abundant duck species every year. 

Brad Bortner is Chief of the Division of Migratory Bird Management at the Fish and Wildlife Service.  He says this year’s survey recorded more than 48 million ducks. That’s the highest number of ducks recorded since the agency started keeping records in 1955.

“We’ve had a series of very good years on the prairies, with excellent water conditions and great habitat management and restoration programs.”

He says more than half of North America’s duck breeding happens in the prairie pothole region of the Dakotas and eastern Montana.  It’s nicknamed America’s duck factory.

Bortner says species such as mallards, gadwalls and redheads are all doing great.  And he says the breeding duck populations in Michigan are doing well too.

So… that’s the good news.  The bad news… some other duck species are not doing so well. 

Brad Bortner says conditions that are good for some species are not good for others.  Diving ducks hang out in deeper wetlands… and there was enough water to support them.  But the shallow wetlands dried up.

“We had a loss of temporary and shallow wetlands because of lack of rain and the mild winter that has affected breeding habitat for some of the early nesting dabbling species.”

The survey finds there were drastic wetland declines in some areas of the prairie regions. Brad Bortner says habitat loss is a big concern…

"Loss of habitat through agriculture and other development.”

But at the moment… Brad Bortner says the high numbers for many duck species are a pretty good sign.  He expects hunters and bird watchers will see plenty of ducks this fall.

That’s the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Scientists know a lot about how natural places process carbon dioxide.  But there hasn’t been a lot of research into what happens throughout the year in the green spaces in cities and suburbs.

Emily Peters is an author of a paper out this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research.  She’s been looking at how plants and trees in one suburban neighborhood take in carbon dioxide during the year… and how they offset the carbon dioxide people in the neighborhood emit – by say, driving their cars.

“In the summer we found the uptake of carbon dioxide from the vegetation is enough to offset fossil fuel emissions – just in the summer.”

She says evergreen and leafy trees took in more CO2 during the middle of the summer. Lawns did the best job of taking in CO2 during the spring and fall.  But Peters says those plants did NOT balance out the total amount of carbon dioxide released in the suburban neighborhood by burning fossil fuels over the year. 

If you're wondering: do certain species of trees do a better job than others?

"That is the question everybody wants answered – we can’t go out with this study and tell city foresters they should plant more of this kind of tree vs. this kind of tree."

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This is the Environment Report.

When was the last time you were someplace so dark that you could look up at the night sky and actually see the stars? Not just a handful, but hundreds or thousands?

“The Milky Way when it rises here looks like a thunderstorm coming toward you. And you think, oh my god, it’s going to cloud over and it’s not, it’s the Milky Way rising, it’s the edge of our galaxy coming up.”

That’s a scene from a new documentary. It’s called The City Dark and it airs tonight on PBS stations (check your local listings).

The film takes a look at our love affair with artificial light – and why humans and wildlife need the night sky.  Ian Cheney directed and produced The City Dark and he joins me now.  Ian, you grew up in rural Maine – and in fact we’re talking to you from your parents’ house in Maine right now, but you’ve been working in New York City – and obviously, those are two big extremes. Why did you want to make this film?

Cheney: Well, when I moved to New York City, one of the first things I realized was that I was missing the night sky, and that launched me on a journey to explore this broader topic of light pollution and how artificial light affects our world.

RW: So what do you think we lose when we’re in cities or suburbs with bright street lights when we can’t see the sky?

Cheney: Well, it probably varies person by person but a lot of the things I came to feel and a lot of the things I heard from the people I interviewed involved a loss of a sense of perspective, a sense of place in the universe, a sense of connection to the cosmos, the stars beyond the everyday world in which we live that provides all sorts of inspiration.

RW: I have to tell you your photography of the night sky in this film is so beautiful.  What kind of challenges did you have shooting the footage?

Cheney: Well, the word photography of course means writing with light. So the idea of making a film in the dark was challenging from the beginning, especially on a budget with small cameras. So we used a lot of time lapse photography in the film, using regular SLR still cameras, not video cameras, to shoot still images of the night sky in sequence. We would shoot hundreds of images of stars over the course of the night, then string them together in time lapse imagery so you can watch the stars rise up over a mountain, or in many cases, watch city lights twinkle throughout the night as a few stars pop up as best they can.

RW: Ian Cheney is the director and producer of The City Dark. It airs tonight on PBS stations (check your local listings). Thank you so much!

Cheney: Thank you!

RW: Michigan has one of only six International Dark Sky Parks in the country.  That’s a designation for a place with an exceptional view of the night sky. Ours is The Headlands, in the northwest Lower Peninsula about two miles west of Mackinac City. 

That’s the Environment Report for today. I’m Rebecca Williams.

The Palisades plant near South Haven has an aluminum water tank that’s used in case of emergencies or when the plant needs to be refueled. It’s been leaking. Last month, Entergy – the company that owns the plant – shut it down to fix the leak.

Michigan Radio’s Lindsey Smith has been covering this story. Lindsey, it’s just come out that that water tank has been leaking for a LOT longer than the company first admitted.

Lindsey: Yeah, at that time a Palisades spokesperson told me Entergy knew about the leak for several weeks. But it turns out that they really knew about this tank leaking for more than a year.

Rebecca: How’d you find that out?

Lindsey: So a watchdog group dug up a document – this is a document from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that’s the federal agency that regulates Palisades and all the other nuclear power plants in the country. So, go back to May 18th 2011. There’s water leaking into the plant’s control room. This is the brain of the planet. Workers determined at that point that rain was getting into the control room. But they also found a tiny leak in this huge water tank. The tank rests above the control room. Now, tiny is 400 milliliters – from a water tank that holds close to 300,000 gallons. So, because it’s such a super tiny amount they plan to fix the tank during the next planned refueling outage. No biggie.

So this past April – the plant shuts down to replace its spent nuclear fuel rods. Mark Savage says the tank was drained and repairs began.

“The modification we made to what’s called the nozzle in the tank we thought was the leak source.”

But when they fill up the tank it’s still leaking. In fact it’s probably worse.

Rebecca: Worse than before?

Lindsey: Yeah, remember before they tried to fix the tank the leak was nearly two cups of water a day. After the fix the leak got as bad as 31 gallons day.

Rebecca: So this water that’s leaking out, is it safe?

Lindsey: It does contain “trace amounts” of tritium – that’s a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. That’s because the water comes into contact with the fuel at the plant, Savage said. It was contained in smaller tanks when the big tank was leaking and federal regulators say there was no danger to workers or the public – it never left the plant.

Rebecca: Since the last time we talked about Palisades, a group of special federal investigators has launched an investigation into the leaky water tank. What’s going on with that?

Lindsey: Well, the company can’t comment – or it won’t comment – on the investigation and there’s not much the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can say about open investigations either. But NRC Spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng says the investigation isn’t about the current leak issues – it’s about the “historical handling” of the water tank leak.

“You know how much of a leak, and what did you know, when did you know it? Stuff like that – those are the questions that we have to wait before we can respond.”

I don’t know what they’re looking into but there was something that caught my eye in reviewing these documents. When plant workers were figuring out where the water in the control room was coming from they had to go out of their way to check out some of the pipes connected to the water tank. Documents show the pipes hadn’t been inspected in more than 17 years even though they’re supposed to every three or four years. But I don’t know if that’s what the investigators are looking into. And NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng cannot comment on this issue because it is under investigation.

Thanks Lindsey. Lindsey Smith is Michigan Radio’s West Michigan reporter. That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Enbridge Energy is planning to replace an old pipeline that runs through Michigan.

It’s called Line 6B. That’s the same line that broke in Marshall nearly two years ago.  The Environmental Protection Agency says more than one million gallons of tar sands oil spilled into Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River. 

Since the spill, Enbridge has been making repairs on that pipeline.   

Joe Martucci is a spokesperson for Enbridge. He says the new pipeline will cut down on the number of repairs they’ll have to make.

“The purpose and need of it is integrity driven and also to increase the capacity of the line at the same time.”

After the Marshall spill, Enbridge was ordered to reduce the pressure in Line 6B.  That means there’s a lot less oil flowing through that pipeline now than there was before the spill.

Martucci says the new pipeline will allow Enbridge to double the amount of oil they can transport, up to 500,000 barrels per day.  There is the potential for the pipeline to move as much as 800,000 barrels per day. But Joe Martucci says they would have to add more equipment to do so, and file a new application with the state of Michigan.

He says oil from Alberta’s tar sands region will be the main product in their new pipeline. 

“The refiners and others are telling us they want more access to this oil and you know, it’s our job to try and provide them with a transportation capacity that makes that available.”

Some landowners and environmental groups are worried about the idea of more tar sands oil moving through the Great Lakes region.

Beth Wallace is with the National Wildlife Federation. 

“In order for them to transport it in its raw form, which it almost is equivalent to holding a chunk of clay, they have to dilute it with this liquid gas condensate and pump it at very high pressures, which heats the line as well. It’s like sandblasting a line.”

Wallace says her group is concerned those factors could lead to another pipeline spill. The official investigation into what caused the Marshall spill is still underway. 

The federal government is also funding a study to find out whether tar sands oil is more corrosive to pipelines than traditional crude oil. (The Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration was directed by Congress to study whether diluted bitumen, aka tar sands oil, poses any increased risk of spills in pipelines that carry it. PHMSA has contracted this study out to the National Academy of Sciences, to, in PHMSA’s words, “conduct a full and independent
study of this topic.”)

“Once that study is concluded there could be changes that happen to our regulatory system over pipelines, and so for any project to be pushed through before that study is concluded is premature.”

We’ve previously reported that state and federal officials say the nature of tar sands oil made the Marshall spill much more difficult to clean up.

Enbridge spokesperson Joe Martucci says the company does not treat tar sands oil any differently than traditional crude.

“There’s no factual data or technical studies that have been done that indicated that this commodity has any different effect on the pipelines than any other crude oil.”

The pipeline replacement project will include 225 miles of pipeline in Michigan.  But the Michigan Public Service Commission has only approved part of that project.  They’re still making a decision on the remaining 160 miles.

Beth Wallace with the National Wildlife Federation says there’s evidence Enbridge wants to make the Great Lakes region a hub for transporting tar sands oil.

“There’s a way they can push product all the way east for export, and they’ve actually talked about that in some of their presentations and Power Points to their investors.”

To do that, the company would have to reverse the flow of oil in one of its Canadian pipelines.

Enbridge spokesperson Joe Martucci confirms that the company is proposing to reverse the flow of oil in that Canadian pipeline. But he says there is no larger-scale plan in place. 

“Well, I think that’s a notion without substance as far as I know. I know of no plan or proposal that would connect all those dots.”

That's the Environment Report.  I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related stories:

Neighbors Feel Pressured by Enbridge's Pipeline Plans

Enbridge Holds Open House on Oil Pipeline Plans

A Michigan coalition wants to increase the state’s renewable energy standard. Emily Fox reports not everyone is on board:

Michigan already has a renewable energy standard on the books. 10 % of the energy utility companies provide has to come from renewable sources by 2015. But the Michigan Energy, Michigan Jobs Coalition wants to bump that number up to 25% by the year 2025. The group is gathering signatures for a ballot proposal to create an amendment to the state constitution.

Stephen Transeth is with a group that is trying to defeat the so called 25-by-25 ballot proposal. He says he supports the current standard but does not think the new proposal is appropriate to put in
the state constitution.

"When you put a proposal like this into the constitution, you are effectively limiting your options in the future, the way we generate and use electricity in the next five, 10, 20 years from now, is going
to look so much different than today."

But the organizers behind 25-by-25 say utilities are already ahead of schedule to meet the current standard and it’s been cheaper than expected.

Mark Pischea is with the Michigan Energy, Michigan Jobs Coalition. He says Michigan companies are already sending wind turbine parts to places like Spain and China.

"Michigan has the opportunity to again be the hub to export products made in Michigan to the world, just like what we did 100 years ago with the automobile."

330,000 signatures are needed to put the proposal on the ballot in November.

For the Environment Report, I’m Emily Fox.

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This is the Environment Report.

Honeybees are responsible for pollinating about one of every three bites of food we eat.

Rufus Isaacs is an entomology professor at Michigan State University. He studies pollination of berry crops.

"Honeybees are, if we’re talking about commercial agriculture, they’re the most important pollinator. We have tens of thousands of those bees that come into Michigan every spring and they do the lion’s share of the work to get our cherry crop, our blueberry crop, our apple crop, our pickling cucumber crop pollinated."

But since 2006, beekeepers have been reporting major honeybee losses. That’s because of something called Colony Collapse Disorder.

Honeybees are not native to Michigan, but there are 400 native bee species in the state. Isaacs says these native bees also pollinate crops and wild flowers.  But he says the overall health of native bee populations is unclear.

"To be honest, we don't really know anything about long-term trends in their populations because there hasn't been any careful monitoring of them over the years."

A few days ago, Isaacs and others in MSU’s entomology department put on an event called Bee Palooza.

The bee experts say human development is threatening the habitats that native bees use. So they wanted to show people how to build homes for native bees in their backyards.

Emily May is a graduate student at MSU. She’s standing next to a structure that’s shaped like a house. It’s made out of logs, bamboo and pieces of wood with a lot of holes in them. May calls it a bee hotel.

"It's really easy to make a bee hotel. You can just basically take a piece of old wood and drill some holes into it around 6 millimeters in diameter, and pretty much if you put it out there, the bees will come."

May says in winter, you should put your bee hotel in the refrigerator so it doesn’t freeze. In the spring, you can put it back outside along with a fresh piece of wood.

If you’re worried about getting stung, the experts at Bee Palooza promise that native bees are docile. They won’t hurt you.

It’s not too late in the year to start a bee hotel, and you can also plant blue, purple and yellow flowers to attract native bees.

This story was reported and written by Suzanne Jacobs.

That’s the Environment Report for today. I’m Rebecca Williams.

This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Communications towers make all kinds of things possible. Emergency responders, TV stations, and wireless networks need them… and of course, this radio story you’re listening to right now is coming to you by way of a tower. These towers have lights on them at night so pilots can see them and avoid running into them.

But it turns out… some kinds of tower lights can be deadly for migratory birds.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other groups recently looked at bird-tower collisions in the U.S. and Canada. The study estimated that close to 7 million birds are killed each year. Neotropical songbirds that migrate at night are the most affected.

“We don’t understand the exact psyche of what’s going on with birds and why they’re attracted into the lights, but it is not unlike a moth attracted into a porch light.”

Joelle Gehring is a senior conservation scientist at the Michigan Natural Features Inventory. It’s part of Michigan State University.

She says during the spring and fall migration, birds that fly at night can get confused by the steady-burning lights on towers. She says cloudy or foggy nights make it hard for birds to navigate using stars.

“Some people believe that when the stars are obscured from vision of these migratory birds who are using stars and sunrise and sunset for navigation, that that is when they are drawn into the lights of the communication tower, that is when they start circling and circling and potentially hitting a guy wire or becoming simply exhausted.”

And she says it appears red lights might be more harmful than other colors.

“There is also some evidence from laboratory studies that have shown the red lights actually change the chemical ability of the bird to use magnetic fields for navigation.”

Gehring has been working with government agencies, and the tower and communications industries to come up with a solution. She and her colleagues conducted research using the Michigan State Police Tower System.

“The steady burning lights, the lights that don’t blink, those lights appear to be drawing in birds at a higher rate and in higher densities than lights that were flashing.”

They found if you turn those steady burning lights off… fewer birds ran into the towers.

“By eliminating those steady burning lights we were able to reduce avian collisions by 50-70% and those are towers with guy wire supports.”

But Gehring says human safety has to come first. So before any changes could be made, the Federal Aviation Administration had to make sure they would be safe for pilots.

The FAA just completed that three-year study. Researchers ran flight evaluations in northern Michigan and tested various kinds of lighting setups for towers. They found that those steady burning lights could be replaced with flashing lights on some towers. And they found that on tall towers, the steady burning lights could be turned off completely… as long as there were other lights that were flashing.

The FAA could not make anyone available for an interview by our deadline. But in an email statement a spokesperson said the agency has updated its tower lighting guidelines. That means tower operators are now legally able to change their lighting systems if they want to… and if government agencies give them the okay.

Darin Schroeder is Vice President of Conservation Advocacy for the American Bird Conservancy. He says making small changes to tower lighting systems could have a big effect on bird kills.

“Migratory birds are in decline. So reducing one anthropogenic threat to birds is a hugely important task – and one we’re really excited about.”

Requests for comment from industry groups were not returned by our deadline.

In case you’re wondering, I talked with Michigan Radio’s chief engineer… and he says he’s looking into the new FAA guidelines.

This story was informed by the Public Insight Network.

That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.