GLOBAL EXTENT OF BIRD ARMAGEDDON
Anders Brunstad alerted me to the installation of one
of the most powerful radar stations in the world on the
Varanger Peninsula in Finnmark, Norway just before tens
of thousands of birds fell dead all over the peninsula.
The southern and eastern coasts of the peninsula also
have 4G+ and, increasingly, 5G service, added recently.
At Ekkerøy Nature Reserve, on the southern coast of the
peninsula, at least 15,000 endangered kittiwakes died
at the end of July and beginning of August 2023. They
nest there in the summer on high cliffs where they are
directly in the line of fire of the radar, which is 50
kilometers away. The restaurant at Ekkerøy was forced
to close for the summer because it was “raining down”
dead birds. The total population of these seabirds in
Norway was only about 50,000. Dead terns and other
kinds of gulls have also been collected. Half of the
cranes at Ekkerøy have died.
The radar, called Globus III, was built by the United
States on the island of Vardøya in Vardø, the
easternmost city in Norway, which is across a bay from
northern Russia. It appears to be part of a civil
defense network called the Space Fence. Details about
this site have been kept secret, but I found a Request
for Information published on February 22, 2022 on the
U.S. government’s website, SAM.gov. It states:
“This system is a one-of-a kind design which will be
fielded in 2023. The program is a bi-national,
collaborative specialized collection system. The GLOBUS
program is a dual band ground-based radar system
consisting of an S-band solid state phased array, an X-
band dish antenna, an Integrated System Controller
(ISC), and a Mission Communications Suite (MCS) hosted
at an Outside Continental United States (OCONUS)
location.”
Other Space Fence radars are located on Kwajalein
Island in the Marshall Islands, and in Western
Australia. These S-band (2 GHz to 4GHz) phased array
radars each have 36,000 transmitting antennas, a peak
power of 2.7 MW and, when focused into a narrow beam
that scans the sky in all directions, a peak effective
radiated power of several billion watts.
The conflagration is not confined to Finnmark, or to
Norway. Last summer I reported on mass deaths of
nesting seabirds in locations near new antennas in the
Netherlands and France (Birds on Texel Island; Sea
Birds’ Last Refuges). This summer the situation is
immensely worse. The continued proliferation around the
world of 4G and 5G cell towers and antennas, as well as
offshore wind farms, has killed millions of wild birds
on five continents, together with foxes, skunks,
raccoons, fishers, badgers, martens, black bears,
grizzly bears, bobcats, lynx, mountain lions, wild
boar, otters, Virginia opossums, seals, penguins, and
other animals.
Last year, 40% of the Dalmatian pelicans nesting in
Greece died, along with 20% of those in Romania, and
large numbers in Montenegro and Albania. By May 2023,
more than 50,000 dead wild birds of all kinds had been
reported in the United Kingdom, 40,000 in eastern
Canada, and tens of thousands in the United States. By
July 31, 2023, China was reporting 5,100 dead birds in
Tibet. Reports of mortality have come from every state
in the United States, across 129 species of birds. Huge
numbers of bald eagles have died. Just in November and
December 2022, more than 50,000 seabirds died along the
coast of Peru, including 16,890 Peruvian pelicans and
4,324 brown boobies, both endangered in Peru. In Chile,
as of January 1, 2023, perhaps 10,000 seabirds had
died, including pelicans, kelp gulls, Belcher’s gulls,
grey gulls, guanay cormorants, Peruvian boobies,
elegant terns, and turkey vultures.
On May 9, 2023, the Chilean government reported the
deaths of 27,977 seabirds, and on July 21, 2023, the
Peruvian government reported the deaths of 519,541
seabirds. These represented birds of 65 species. In
addition, Chile reported the deaths of 2,517 Humboldt
penguins, 460 Magellanic penguins, 16,856 sea lions,
and smaller numbers of dolphins, porpoises, otters and
other kinds of seals, while Peru reported the deaths of
9,314 sea lions and 100 other sea mammals. According to
a report by the OFFLU, a global network of expertise on
animal influenza, Chile has lost at least 13% of its
Humboldt penguins, Peru has lost at least 36% of its
Peruvian pelicans, and Chile and Peru together have
lost at least 9% of their sea lions.
Ornithologists are all blaming this catastrophe on
avian influenza, in spite of the fact that most of the
dead birds are testing negative for any influenza
virus, and the ones that test positive have all
different variants of the virus so could not be
transmitting it to one another, let alone to bears and
penguins. For example, 233 dead birds were examined for
flu virus by the Norwegian Veterinary Institute between
August 14 and October 1, 2023. They found highly
pathogenic H5N1 virus in 8 birds, highly pathogenic
H5N5 in 2 birds, highly pathogenic H5Nx (other
subtypes) in 2 birds, low pathogenic H5Nx in 6 birds,
“other Influenza A virus” in 8 birds, and no virus at
all in 207 birds.
Yet the United States is already stockpiling a vaccine
against H5N1 in case it spreads to human beings and
causes a pandemic.
The disappearance of bugs has also been in the news.
Dr. Norman Leppla, a professor of entomology at the
University of Florida, said that state’s lovebug
infestation has completely vanished. They used to come
in massive numbers in the spring and fall around May
and September with a little variation depending on if
you are in the northern or southern part of the state.
“It’s not subtle, they’re really not here this season,”
he said in an interview published October 5, 2023. But
no one is blaming that on “avian influenza.”
Wind farms are also devastating birds, as documented by
German scientists in an article published in Nature on
April 13, 2023. They found that populations of red-
throated loons plummeted in the North Sea after five
clusters of offshore wind farms were built there
between 2010 and 2014. Their populations declined by an
average of 94% within 1 kilometer of a wind farm and by
52% within 10 kilometers, with some population
reduction at distances up to 24 kilometers.
Wind farms are also killing whales. At least 32 whales
have washed up dead on the U.S. east coast in recent
months, prompting a group of New Jersey legislators to
call for an immediate moratorium on offshore wind farms
in the area.
Communities that are waking up
Sanity has broken out in in Chhattisgarh’s Gariaband
district, in the Indian village of Lachkera, home to
600 families. A village resolution prohibits the
installation of any cell towers in order to protect
birds. “We have learnt that the transmission towers
cause radiation that is harmful; we would rather prefer
to live with weak network connectivity from the
adjoining locations. It’s a delight to welcome Openbill
storks with the onset of the monsoon. They nest in the
trees of our village and no one in the village disturbs
them. We don’t permit any mobile phone service provider
to establish their tower despite the pressure and
temptation from them,” said Uday Nishad, the elected
head of the village government.
They learned this from a field survey by scientists at
C.V. Raman University that was conducted in 2017 of
birds in the vicinity of the 9 cell towers in Bijapur
district. Reviewing 113 studies on the ecological
effects of RF radiation, the authors wrote:
“When birds are exposed to weak electromagnetic fields,
they disorient and fly in all directions, which harm
their natural navigational abilities. A large number of
birds like pigeons, sparrows, swans are getting lost
due to interference from the ‘unseen enemy’, i.e.
mobile tower. It has also been noted of late that
animals used near mobile towers are prone to various
dangers and threats to life including still births,
spontaneous abortions, birth deformities, behavioral
problems and general decline on overall health.
Electromagnetic pollution is a possible cause for
deformations and decline of some amphibian populations
too. Apart from birds and animals, electromagnetic
radiation emanating from cell towers can also affect
vegetable, crop and plants in its vicinity.”
They visited the areas where each cell tower was
located for 2 to 3 hours in the morning and 2 to 3
hours in the evening, every day for 6 months, and
counted birds — peacocks, wild ducks, crows, parrots,
cuckoos, sparrows, wild pigeons, eagles, and
woodpeckers. There were far fewer of every kind of bird
in 2017 than there had been in a survey conducted in
2006 before the towers were erected.
It bears repeating, yet again, that influenza, whether
in people, animals, or birds, is not caused by a virus
and has never been demonstrated to be a contagious
disease. In 1918, at the height of the Spanish
influenza, attempts by medical teams in Boston and San
Francisco to demonstrate the contagious nature of the
flu met with complete and resounding failure. Such
experiments in humans were published in the Journal of
the American Medical Association, the Boston Medical
and Surgical Journal, and Public Health Reports. Such
experiments in horses were published in Veterinary
Journal. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 of my book, The Invisible
Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life, are devoted
to a complete, detailed examination of the history and
science of influenza. Chapter 16, the longest chapter
in the book, is devoted in part to the effects of
electromagnetic radiation on birds. Some diseases are
caused by viruses, but influenza is not one of them. I
suggest once again that all bird conservation
organizations should acquire my book and read it
carefully.
Arthur Firstenberg
President, Cellular Phone Task Force
Author, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity
and Life
P.O. Box 6216
Santa Fe, NM 87502
USA
phone: +1 505-471-0129
arthur@cellphonetaskforce.org
October 17, 2023
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