Do Solar Panels Kill Critters?

Solar, like wind, will probably have some effect on the critters in the area's they are built, at first. But critter's, unlike they're intelligent? human counter parts, adapt to changes of these types, think of driving auto's and what most humans never learn especially as they rubber neck while passing accidents usually caused because a driver or more were following to closely or the drivers were doing doing more then driving while sitting behind that wheel!!

Big Solar's Death Panels

March/April 2011 Issue - Could solar-energy projects destroy the very ecosystems they're meant to save from climate change?

I think I found one!" I say, pointing at a small, round hole in the sand at the base of a cactus.

"Nope. That's a little too small."

I'm crouching in the middle of California's Mojave Desert, about 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles. I'm here with Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, and two Sierra Club volunteers, and we're looking for tortoise burrows. The warm December sun brings out the desert colors: green creosote bushes, fading red wildflowers, golden cholla cacti rearing their prickly heads above the low scrub. To the north lie the Cady Mountains, where bighorn sheep move between peaks. Except for the chirping of a few birds—horned larks, loggerhead shrikes, mountain plovers, and American pipits—it's quiet.

But not for long. Later this year, the desert will thrum with the pounding of backhoes, heavy trucks, and articulated haulers, rolling in to transform the Mojave into the epicenter of America's solar-energy revolution. In 2009, President Obama announced that renewable-energy projects launched before December 31, 2010, could qualify for millions of dollars of federal stimulus money, kicking off an unprecedented solar gold rush. (The deadline has since been extended.) The California Energy Commission estimates that nine solar projects it recently approved will generate more than 4,000 megawatts of power—about 6 percent of the state's grid capacity, up from less than 1 percent. {continued}