See The South Is Having Second Thoughts About Trading Pine Trees for Solar Panels: Americans used to focus on the cost and reliability of electricity. Now, they are fighting over how it is produced, a solar executive says by Ryan Dezember of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"Hunters, botanists, residents worried about water quality and people citing Scripture lined up to oppose the installation of 2,100 acres of solar panels next to a wildlife preserve.
But it was the plight of the local black bears that doomed the proposal from Silicon Ranch, one of the South’s largest solar operators."
"The 300 or so bears that roam the Oaky Woods Wildlife Management Area and adjacent timberland are already so hemmed in by highways and development that they are inbreeding"
"The timberland that Silicon Ranch wanted to buy and develop near Perry was long managed as part of the adjacent wildlife preserve. Much of the property was logged to make way for solar panels.
The bears, for which an area high-school football team is named, were a concern from the start. Ben Carr, a graduate student at the University of Georgia who studies them, said bears can coexist with timber operations, denning in the slash piles left by loggers and feeding on the blackberries that sprout. He presented research at public meetings showing how development reduced their range and pushed sows and their cubs from familiar territory.
He described the deformities turning up due to genetic isolation. “Those are warning signs,” Carr said."
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