Project on Lake Michigan birds in full flight

The project is doing more than document birds – it hopes to guide decisions on energy development.

Cross Village ~  Lake Michigan

 “Wind turbines will likely be placed in Lake Michigan,” said Cutright, who founded the Great Lakes Bird and Bat Observatory after a career as an ecologist with We Energies. “If they are, we want to be able to help recommend sites that will be least detrimental for wildlife.” The two men helped form a Great Lakes Offshore Research Advisory Group in 2009 to research the issues around possible offshore wind development.

~The group had 28 members, including representatives of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, UW-Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology.~`` While books have been written about and generations of research data are available on bird migrations on the Mississippi River and elsewhere in Wisconsin, relatively little is known about bird concentrations, movements and timing on the open waters of the Great Lakes.
[JSOnline]