Airport silent about ecological consultations
As many as 222 bird species have been recorded in the remaining natural habitats near the airport, on which Aéroports de Montréal is preparing to build. There is some concern about the secrecy in which the airport authority is holding consultations about its enlargement.
Jim 12:26 on 2025-08-01 Permalink
Funny how airports spark outrage over birds, but wind turbines stay above criticism. At least at Radio Canada/CBC.
dhomas 12:50 on 2025-08-01 Permalink
Wind turbines create renewable energy, can be planned to mitigate habitat disruption through proper planning, and new technology is being applied to turbine designs which make them move slower and therefore safer for birds. The turbines can also be stopped and bird life returns to normal, if necessary.
Airports take away the bird habitats forever. The increase in airplane traffic results in immense consumption of fossil fuels, which in turn creates pollution. With an urban airport, the pollution directly and immediately affects the population.
The comparison is not even close.
MarcG 13:06 on 2025-08-01 Permalink
Brandolini’s law in action
Jim 14:48 on 2025-08-01 Permalink
Yeah, it was not so much a comparison between airports and windmills. More about the birds, or how critics can be shared about one thing, but sound like ‘cursing in a church’ on another topic. Don’t want to insult anyone, I am all for renewable energy, but in the best way possible. I just don’t believe in windmills (even while being Dutch, lol), and think they are counterproductive. But that’s all off topic as for the airport article.
Nicholas 15:10 on 2025-08-01 Permalink
I assume it’s less bird strikes and more bird habitat loss, as dhomas says. But there’s also just a massive scale difference involved for bird deaths in Canada per year:
Cats: 200 million
Power lines, both collisions and electrocutions: 25 million
Collisions with houses and buildings: 25 million
Collisions with vehicles: 14 million
Game hunting: 5 million
Agricultural pesticides: 2.7 million
Agricultural mowing: 2.2
Commercial forestry: 1.4 million nests, equivalent to 900,000 adult birds
Communications towers: 220,000
Wind turbines: 16,700
I would assume many of the birds will find other habitat nearby, as there is some green space that would remain in that area, and, of course, lots and lots of other green space around, though yes some will probably not survive. But the orders of magnitude are just very, very different. Cats kill 6 birds a second. Cats kill more birds in three quarters of an hour than wind turbines do in a year. Power infrastructure kills more birds in six hours than wind turbines do in a year. Oil and Gas is not in the top ten either, nor is deforestation from buildings (but it is from logging). Canada has 10 billion birds, and we’re killing a lot, but cats kill twice as many as all other causes combined. I think cats are great, but if you care about birds, and are focusing on anything other than cats and collisions with buildings, vehicles and power lines, that’s like, well, focusing on the aviation industry to reduce emissions: sure it’ll help on the margin, but you’re ignoring what are by far the biggest sources of the problem.
bob 15:36 on 2025-08-01 Permalink
$10 billion to build a $1 billion project, and the concern is birds. WTF is wrong with people.
Kate 17:15 on 2025-08-01 Permalink
I’ve said this before: I do not believe the figures about cats. Birds are under pressure from deforestation, from insecticides and pesticides killing off their food sources. Even from flying into windows. Cats are negligible compared to these things but they’re easy to blame because a cat can kill a bird.
Do bobcats and lynxes kill birds much? They eat rodents and rabbits. Given the ratio of effort expended per prey, a cat will always go for the smaller mammal.
jeather 07:04 on 2025-08-02 Permalink
I also believe that the cat numbers are incorrect, but also it’s not very difficult to have indoor cats. Mine are only allowed in my balcony and any bird they manage to kill on a balcony would probably have been doomed anyhow.
The issue with domestic cats vs wild cats is in part that domestic cats just kill for the pleasure of it and in part because there are a lot more of them.
Kate 08:16 on 2025-08-03 Permalink
I may even have to look into how the cat figures are arrived at, but I suddenly had a suspicion. Domestic cats have been destructive to bird and other species in situations where they were brought by settlers to small islands where there hadn’t been predators of that type before, and where cats were able to wreak havoc. I suspect those numbers have been generalized to bigger places where they don’t apply. Do we have hordes of domestic cats living in Canadian forests and fields? Are our cats bringing home songbirds to eat?
No. It isn’t the cats. It’s us.
MarcG 09:29 on 2025-08-04 Permalink
The methodology for calculating numbers is in here if/when you dig into it https://abcbirds.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Blancher-2013-Estimated-number-of-birds-killed-by-domestic-cats-in-Canada.pdf