Parrots and Politics

I can't believe this is still an issue. A electricity-generation windmill farm was planned to be built in Victoria but the federal environmental minister knocked it back on the alleged grounds it would pose a threat to the endangered Orange-bellied parrot, which migrates yearly between Tasmania and Victoria. What sort of threat are we talking here? Since the windmills won't be in the bird's flight region, the potential risk is that one bird may die per year. Surely one bird per year is OK for cleaner airs? No? And it gets better:

But Victorian Energy Minister Theo Theophanous said Senator Campbell had been unable to find any evidence an orange-bellied parrot had been killed by a wind farm.

"The wind farm in Tasmania is in the flight path of the parrots, and the study found there was a one-in-20-year probability of a bird dying, which when compared with the Bald Hills project, which was a one-in-143-year probability, you would normally say this has no hope of going ahead.

A one-in-143-year chance of dying? Poor little feathered critters. And they're fast too, apparently clocking speeds up to 150km/h while NOT hitting any trees. I reckon if a species is stupid enough to be wiped out by a couple of windmills, it deserves its fate. Same goes for some humans. Darwinism rules.

Sidenote: Just realised I could've looked real smart-like by using the term quixotic in this entry. You know, in reference to that crazy Spanish literary character, Don Quixote, who fought windmills because he thought they might be giants? Ah, forget it.