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Arrival of windmills to N.J. may pose threat to winged creatures
by Brian T. Murray/The Star-Ledger
Sunday August 16, 2009, 12:20 PM
One force of nature lures butterflies, bats and birds to the skies over a geographic formation known as the Shawangunk-Kittatinny Ridge.
The wind.
The Associated Press
Windmills like these, pictured in Maine, may take their place in New Jersey along the Shawangunk-Kittatinny Ridge.
Each fall, a strong and steady northwest current creates deflective updrafts and thermals as it collides with the 250 miles of mountainous spine stretching inside the larger Appalachian Highlands from New York's Ulster County, through northwest New Jersey and southwesterly toward Pennsylvania's Mason-Dixon line. Eons ago, butterflies, bats and birds, especially raptors, discovered they could effortlessly ride the thermals during their annual, autumn migrations and they have been flocking there by the tens of thousands.
Bird-watchers, who discovered the phenomenon less than a century ago, also flock there to marvel at the kettles of bald eagles, sharp-shined hawks, peregrine falcons and 13 other species of raptors known to share those skies.
But windmills now threaten to turn them all into mulch.
The nation's growing thirst for alternative energy has descended on a section of the ridge known as Blue Mountain in Lower Towamensing Township, Pa., about 20 miles west of the New Jersey border. A ski resort, interested in cutting electrical costs, built a test tower in December to monitor the potential output for at least one large, commercial turbine, and another resort in Delaware, Pa., has similar plans.
"There is a concern about it along all of the Appalachian ridges," said Donald Heintzelman, ornithologist, author and co-founder of the Wildlife Information Center in Slatington, Pa. "There already are wind farms in West Virginia and in southwestern Pennsylvania, as well as farther north in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. We want to keep them off the Shawangunk-Kittatinny. This is an internationally known raptor migration route."
Wildlife have collided with the giant, blindly rotating blades of wind-power for 25 years in places like California's Altamont Pass. One 2004 study there showed 1,766 to 4,721 feathered creatures, including eagles, are annually cut up in the 5,000 turbines.
Heintzelman has petitioned the federal Department of the Interior to designate the Shawangunk-Kittatinny Ridge as a "National Raptor Migration Corridor," a unique label that would carry no legal protection for the ridge. But more than 200 environmental groups have signed on to his campaign this summer, insisting it will help the Shawangunk-Kittatinny Ridge win future protections.
"It would become a tool for land conservation organizations," said Eric Olsen of the Nature Conservancy in New Jersey. "It gives national recognition to the value of the ridge, and a designation like that will bring in more birding people who will spend more dollars in the towns they come through to get there and that will boost incentives to preserve the area."
But windmills are not a bane to all conservationists along the 1,500 miles of Appalachian ridges between Alabama and Canada.
In West Virginia, where turbine fields already have been built, many activists contend there are worse things than shredded birds and bats. The ridges in the Mountain State are disappearing, along with the wildlife that rely on them, as coal companies strip them down to harvest the nation's most prevalent, lucrative and, arguably, dirtiest fuel source.
"I think we have to consider the balancing act, after we consider the alternative which, down here, is complete destruction of our mountaintops. Our mountaintops are being turned into moonscapes by the coal companies," said Lorelei Scarboro, wind project leader of the Coal River Mountain Watch.
The organization's decade-long struggle in southern West Virginia to end mountain-top mining was noted in the book "Crimes Against Nature," Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 2003 indictment of the environmental policies of then-President George W. Bush. The toxic waste that coal refinement pours into local water supplies and the massive coal slurry impoundments, such as the one that gave way and destroyed a dozen homes in Tennessee in December, are a daily fact of life for people losing their mountain ridges to coal production.
"We have a choice between totally destroying part of the Appalachian Mountains, including the wildlife, the headwater streams and the Appalachian culture, or finding alternatives like wind power," said Scarboro.
On another West Virginia ridge known as Kayford Mountain, Larry Gibson, an activist nicknamed the "Keeper of the Mountains," has watched coal mining erase the forested crests where his family took root in the 1700s.
"I am all for windmills. I think that they would look a lot better than mountaintop removal. I also think windmills are cheaper and a better way to have electricity, water and all the necessary needs we have that we use coal for," he said.
National organizations such as the Sierra Club, Audubon and the American Bird Conservancy have a different view. While generally supportive of wind energy, they too want turbines kept off Appalachian ridges like the Shawangunk-Kittatinny, arguing that wind farms must be properly built to not interfere with bird, bat or butterfly migrations.
Turbines already are taking a heavy toll in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Game Commission released a report last spring showing the death rate is highest for bats, which additionally face being wiped out by a mysterious phenomenon called "white-nose syndrome."
The evidence has mounted since studies in 2004 showed 1,500 to 4,000 bats annually were killed by the 44 turbines on West Virginia's Backbone Mountain. In the Meyersdale area of southwestern Pennsylvania, 20 turbines killed 400 to 660 bats in a six-week study period, and researches contend 80 percent of the casualties are hoary bats, red bats and silver-haired bats.
Federal authorities, concerned about impacts on the federally endangered Indiana bat, are now studying plans to erect more windmills -- 30 turbines on Pennsylvania's Shaffer Mountain, about 70 miles west of the Shawangunk-Kittatinny Ridge.
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The other day while traveling in my car hubby spoted a cat riding on his owners shoulders as he peddled his bike. It was a wild site but maybe Simon would like that too. He was curled around his neck just like your picture but the cat was pure white.
To whomever adopted her 
I'm hoping people who have a little extra $ to spare support their local shelters and rescues. Petfinder.org is a great link if anyone is looking for a pet . It hooks up most of the shelters and rescues in one place. And if you are loved by one cat your even more loved by two;) so take the leap and save another life 
Im thinkin 
We had fresh water fish and loved watching them in their tanks it was very zen like. I had tri colored sharks, Angel fish, clown loaches etc. for years. Never made it to Salt water fish though.
