Ducks, Foie Gras, Wind Turbine Chopped, Or Oil Soaked?

How come the only ducks landing in tailings ponds are in the Alberta oilsands? Could it be that the mining companies just don't report it? Nah, they would if they saw them landing, they just never actually see it happen.

This is one of the best articles I have seen yet on the whole ducks in tailings ponds issue.

Birds migrate, and for a long time humans have been constructing things that our avian friends smash into. Electrical power lines are estimated to account for 150 million bird deaths a year in the United States. A further 50 million or so are thought to be killed by smacking into telecommunications towers for services such as cellphones and digital television. Both those figures, incidentally, are provided by the American Wind Energy Association, which itself is combating accusations that wind turbines are unnecessary bird killers — the “Cuisinarts of the sky” are accused of being responsible for about 75,000 avian deaths in the United States annually.
And sometimes, birds don’t slam into things humans have built, we slam into them. Another 60 to 80 million deaths annually are attributed to collisions with cars and trucks on North American roads.
Yet another of Canada’s most notorious bird killers is located a long way from the oil sands. The skyscrapers of downtown Toronto, especially those with the temerity to leave their lights on at night, are giant, deadly obstacles to migrating birds. There are even legions of volunteers who collect the deceased — and sometimes, the wounded — small birds that are scattered about the sidewalks of the financial district any given morning. It’s thought that about a million such birds rattle off the glass of the silent killers such as First Canadian Place each year. National Post writer Joe O’Connor spent a morning with a cleanup crew last spring, where volunteers recounted how high winds and low clouds had turned the downtown core into a veritable killing field of American Redstarts, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks and the like. They counted as many as 300 dead birds, or about as many as died on the Mildred Lake tailings pond this week, thus earning Syncrude the wrath of every politician within reach of a microphone.

I am totally disgusted with Prentice, he is a pretty boy, but he is no Conservative. He should be quoting from the above article. He should be defending the oilsands. Even Ignatieff shows more support for the engine of Canada than Prentice. Maybe Prentice should quit eating Foie Gras, look at what they do to these poor ducks:

Foie gras is produced by force-feeding ducks and geese through metal pipes inserted down their throats, swelling the animals’ livers five to ten times their normal size. Dr. Ward Stone, the former senior wildlife pathologist for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, has conducted necropsies on ducks who died during force-feeding and writes, “The short tortured lives of ducks raised for foie gras is well outside the norm of farm practice. Having seen the pathology that occurs from foie gras production, I strongly recommend that this process be outlawed.”

Freezing rain causes some ducks to fall into the tailings ponds and this is a disaster? I agree that we need to get rid of the tailings ponds, maybe bury it underground, like carbon capture, but give me a break, they are ducks not humans. Let's hold the wind turbine companies to the same standards.  Let's hold the mining companies to the same standards. Let's stop hunter's from shooting those ducks every year. I don't even want to talk about the thousands of human beings being killed every year in tribal wars, that's taboo! They are UN ignored kills.

It appears that some ducks, matter more than humans.