ORLANDO-The Federal Aviation Administration could prove pivotal in bridging a compromise between conservationists and the wireless industry over how to reduce the number of migratory birds killed from nighttime collisions with communications towers.
James Patterson, project manager at the FAA Technical Center, confirmed that agency researchers are investigating tower lighting options and could offer recommendations next year. Patterson and other FAA researchers are working off a template used to significantly reduce the number of lights in wind turbine farms, which have been linked to avian mortality.
“We worked a miracle for the wind turbine market. What can we do with the communications market?” asked Patterson, via phone bridge at last week’s conference of wireless infrastructure association PCIA in Orlando. “We’re enthusiastic about this. We can’t promise that we’re going to come up with something that’s going to be appropriate for everybody.”
Lighting options
Patterson said the FAA is examining whether traditional steady burning red lights can be reduced or eliminated and whether other lighting technologies can be utilized without negative consequences for major stakeholders. Existing FAA tower lighting regulations have not been updated to reflect new lighting technologies.
Environmentalists favor medium-intensity white strobe lights and shorter antenna structures among the more than dozen regulatory changes being sought. Yet it is unclear what the impact of new lights would have on airline pilots.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service claims as many as 50 million birds die annually from tower crashes, but the wireless industry disputes that assertion in part because the figure is not supported by multiple peer-reviewed scientific studies.
“Right now, we’re left with more questions than answers. To draw the conclusion that millions of birds are being killed by colliding with tower structures simply does not match with what we’re seeing in our daily operations,” said Jenna Lamontagne, director of environmental compliance at American Tower Corp.
Lamontagne said American Tower takes bird conservancy seriously and often pursues workaround solutions to protect avian habitats. At the same time, she said retrofitting thousands of towers could be extremely costly.
Joelle Gehring, a senior conservation scientist at Michigan State University, said eliminating the steady red obstruction lighting systems could be a workable solution if it can be determined that air safety is not compromised.
“We heard some rumblings of support from the tower industry, maybe more than rumblings,” said Gehring. “It’s a very real possibility. The FAA has been meeting and is very optimistic on this as well, at least to explore it as a possibility. We want air pilot safety. I want my cellphone, and we also want to preserve birds.”
The U.S. Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circuit held oral argument Sept. 11 on a legal challenge to an FCC decision rejecting the contention that it illegally licensed 6,000 towers in the Gulf Coast without assessing the impact on migratory birds.
“What’s interesting is both of these groups are sincere and well meaning and they look at the same set of facts and they come to completely different conclusions,” said William Sill, a communications attorney heavily involved in the tower-migratory bird debate. “The test is to see whether the FCC will be the arbiter [of the debate] or whether these groups will come together voluntarily and reach some sort of accord.”
