As many as 50 million birds are killed annually in US cell-tower collisions. As more towers go up, builders and researchers eye solutions.

Today FAA regulations require both steady red lights and flashing red or flashing white ones. What Gehring found: Solid steady red lights were a big problem – creating an aura during cloudy weather that drew in birds.

When solid reds were removed, bird deaths fell 71 percent, according to Gehring’s study, which has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication later this year by the Journal of Ecological Applications.

[Read](http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0326/p16s01-sten.html “Read the Article”) (Christian Science Monitor)

In what is one of the worst calamities to hit bat populations in the United States, on average 90 percent of the hibernating bats in four caves and mines in New York have died since last winter. Wildlife biologists fear a significant die-off in about 15 caves and mines in New York, as well as at sites in Massachusetts and Vermont.

Researchers have yet to determine whether the bats are being killed by a virus, bacteria, toxin, environmental hazard, metabolic disorder or fungus. Some have been found with pneumonia, but that and the fungus are believed to be secondary symptoms. Whatever is killing the bats leaves them unusually thin and, in some cases, dotted with a white fungus. Bat experts fear that what they call White Nose Syndrome may spell doom for several species that keep insect pests under control.

[Read](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/science/25bats.html?ex=1364097600&en=90ef516294b3694a&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss “Read the Article”) (New York Times)

Starting today, Raleigh, N.C. becomes the nation’s only city to outlaw garbage disposals. Officials say the appliances allow grease to accumulate in sewers, leading to sewage spills. While people who already have them can keep using them, no new ones can be installed.

Raleigh’s mayor hopes residents will start composting their food scraps.

Many homeowners and a company that makes the kitchen appliances, consider the ban invasive and misdirected.

Read and Listen (NPR)

Sandbars—from small nooks and crannies to some the size of football fields—were formed by an artificial flood unleashed on the Grand Canyon. On a couple of big sandbars there were already beaver tracks, bighorn sheep tracks.

Whatever benefits come from this year’s flood will be eroded within 18 months because additional floods are needed every year to 18 months, but no other high-flow releases are scheduled until after 2012.

Read (National Geographic)

With no anticipation of a healthier bay any time soon, and reports of the lowest crab harvest in Virginia history in hand, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission has done the only thing it could do: It has said it will set new rules limiting the number of crabs watermen may remove from the bay and the periods of time in which they may do it.

Maryland followed suit with new restrictions of its own, knowing that the two states must work in tandem to prevent the blue crab’s numbers from dwindling to a point from which it cannot recover. Researchers say the bay’s blue crab population is a third of what it was just 15 years ago.

[Read](http://fredericksburg.com//News/FLS/2008/032008/03022008/360335 “Read the Article”) (Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star)

A significant drop in the number of hunters in West Virginia has left a hole in the state’s budget, and one lawmaker thinks he has a solution: Allow children to receive hunter training in school.

Children as young as 10 are eligible for hunting licenses in the state, but training courses are typically offered outside of school. Proponents of the plan say they hope embedding training during school hours boosts interest.

Read (AP via the Baltimore Sun)

Despite longer hunting seasons and a record kill last year, bears in the Shenandoah Valley are damaging crops and livestock and scavenging food like teenagers.

Bear nuisance problems come from a combination of a shortage of wild food and the fact that more people are moving into bear territory, biologists say.

Bears primarily eat wild fruit such as blackberries, blueberries and black cherries, as well as mast such as acorns. Last year, because of a late frost in April that killed off flowering wild fruit, many bears, which are omnivores, had little to eat.

Read (inRich.com)