Solar Farms And Biodiversity
I have an old farmer friend, who told me this tale.
His neighbour put up a few acres of solar panels on a field, that adjoins one of his fields, where it generally grows cereal crops.
He told me that he felt he was seeing more hares on his land and wrote to me asking if it could be the solar panels.
I searched the Internet and couldn’t find anything at the time.
But, it should be remembered, that hares have an unusual way of bringing up their leverets, where the mothers generally abandon them during the day and feed them in the evening.
We did wonder, if the solar panels offered protection to the leverets from aerial predators. And the mothers were learning that solar panels were a safer place.
This morning someone made a comment about solar panels on a page in The Times and I searched again.
I found this article on the Solar Power Portal, which is entitled Solar Farms And Biodiversity and thoroughly read it.
It doesn’t say much about hares, but it puts a strong case, that solar panels can increase biodiversity.
Arrest Warrants For Architects Over Collapsed Buildings in Turkey Earthquake
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the Architects’ Journal.
This is the sub-heading.
Turkish government officials have issued 113 arrest warrants for people involved with the construction of buildings that collapsed in last week’s earthquake – including architects, contractors and engineers – reports claim
The article is a serious review of what happened in Turkey, that might have contributed to the scale of the disaster.
These are three paragraphs.
The Guardian claimed the arrests were ‘likely to be seen as an attempt by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan … to deflect blame’, saying that the president ‘faces tough elections in May’.
As already reported by the AJ, regulations introduced in Turkey after a previous earthquake 24 years ago should have ensured that modern buildings were able to withstand quakes of this magnitude.
But it has been widely reported that tens of thousands of buildings were granted ‘construction amnesties’ over several decades. These enabled owners of structures built without the required safety certificates to gain legal exemption upon payment of a fee, a situation that critics say has long risked catastrophe.
The last paragraph sounds very much like institutionalised bribery.
The article is very much a must read.
The Anonymous Widower 