The April stats are in for reported bird deaths at the Ivanpah solar power plant in the California desert, and it's bad news: 97 birds were found killed or mortally injured between April 1 and 29 at the nearly 4,000-acre plant in San Bernardino County south of Las Vegas.
That's a record number of reported deaths for the facility, though the increase may be at least partly a statistical artifact: sources tell ReWire that biologists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) were on site throughout April investigating wildlife mortality on the premises, likely leading to more stringent searches for injured wildlife.
But those searches still covered just 20 percent of the facility, meaning that one could reasonably extrapolate that total bird mortalities for April could be five times the official count. And that's not taking into account injured birds that land outside the fence, or are eaten by scavengers before survey crews can find them.
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