More than 60 years after it was pushed to the edge of extinction, one of North America's rarest birds, the whooping crane, faces new danger from environmentally-friendly wind farms, conservationists warned.
"Companies want to put their farms where the best wind is, and that overlaps with the migration corridor of the whooping crane," Tom Stehn, the whooping crane coordinator of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, told AFP.
"There are areas where we know large numbers of whooping crane stop (during migration) and we would like wind companies to avoid those areas, with a good buffer zone," Stehn said on the eve of what is expected to be the biggest ever business-to-government conference in the United States on renewable energy.
The majestic whooping crane, which stands around five feet (1.5 meters) tall, was pushed to the edge of extinction last century.
In 1941, only 15 of the birds existed in the wild in North America.
Since then, conservation groups have painstakingly built the whooping crane population back up to around 360 in the wild and 150 in captivity.
Whooping cranes migrate annually between wetlands on the coast of Texas and the Northwest Territories in Canada, flying a route that corresponds to the corridor wind companies are eying for their huge turbines as their industry expands.
Stehn said conservation groups and the wind energy industry are in talks to find a solution that would be good for birds while also boosting the amount of power Americans get from wind, a "clean" energy source that is key in the fight against global warming.
Wind energy provided electricity to one percent of US homes last year, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).
The industry grew by around 40 percent last year and is projected to grow by 25 percent annually, with most of the expansion planned for the breezy corridor that stretches northward from Texas to Canada, AWEA says on its website.
Last week, wind energy got a boost when the US House of Representatives voted to extend tax incentives for developers of the renewable power source.
The Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC) is due to open Tuesday.
