Montana electric cooperatives adopt bird protection plan

Montana’s rural electric cooperatives have come up with a single statewide plan to protect birds from power lines that they say is the first of its kind in the nation.

The Avian Protection Plan, or APP, outlines what member cooperatives in the Montana Electric Cooperatives’ Association will do to prevent electrocution and collision deaths, said Gary Wiens, the association’s assistant general manager.

That includes installing insulated connections on the top of poles, bird-flight diverters on power lines and fiber glass or longer cross arms.

“No group of utilities in one state has ever jointly submitted a protection plan to the federal government or the state,” Wiens said.

Rural electric cooperatives manage 56,000 miles of energized line in Montana and 25 cooperatives are association members, with 22 signing off on the plan. Three cooperatives previously came up with their own plans.

“An APP is basically like a blueprint for how you are going to reduce risks to birds on utility structures,” said Dave Wheelihan, the association’s CEO.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks reviewed the plan, which was voluntary, and each agency applauded the effort.

“It’s an important step forward,” said Brent Esmoil, a deputy field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena. “It really gets the right people at the table together so that everybody knows who’s involved and what steps they should be taking to reduce avian mortality.”

Besides protections, the plans spells out who should be notified with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the event of a bird death, Esmoil said. Native American tribes use eagle feathers in ceremonies, he said. That’s one reason why notification is important. The feathers can be delivered to an eagle repository run by the service in Denver and then distributed to tribes.

“There’s a big call for those feathers for the Native American tribes,” he said.

The plan also ensures compliance with federal laws that protect birds, including the Endangered Species Act, the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, the cooperatives said.

Participating electric cooperatives get the benefit of improving service reliability, according to the cooperatives, which hired Burns and McDonnell Engineering Co. of Salt Lake City to assist in developing the plan.

Each cooperative will develop an implementation plan outlining how they will utilize avian-safe construction design standards for new construction, and retrofit older lines as other scheduled maintenance and emergency work is performed.

Another key element is training employees.

Complying with the new standards will not be an increased cost to cooperative member/owners because retrofit work will occur as crews respond to other maintenance outage issues, the cooperatives said.

Sam Mildragovich, a wildlife biologist in NorthWestern Energy’s Environmental Department, said the state’s largest utility has had avian-friendly standards in place for many years.

That includes isolating or insulating electrical equipment to protect birds. New lines have 60 inches of separation between wire conductors, which allows golden eagles to safely land on cross arms in most instances. That’s an example of isolation. Also, energized surfaces are covered, an example of insulation.

NorthWestern Energy also has installed hundreds of osprey platforms to reduce mortality, and it also places markers on lines so birds do not fly into them, he said. At Rainbow Dam in March, NorthWestern used a helicopter to install bird flight diverters on a line crossing the Missouri River.

“Very often, collisions occur in low-light situations,” said Mildragovich, adding that wind also can blow birds into lines.

Rural cooperatives are showing leadership in adopting the plan, said Mildragovich, who called the work by cooperatives and public utilities to protect birds one of the most significant conservation efforts in the state.

“We have tremendous flights of waterfowl and raptor populations,” he said.

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