Again, hundreds of Beebe birds die despite fireworks ban

UPDATES below

By Rady Ananda
Food Freedom

Another New Years Eve, another mass bird kill.  On December 31, 2011, Beebe police chief Wayne Ballew initiated an emergency ban on fireworks around 7:15 pm after receiving reports of dead birds.

Little Rock television station KATV showed a radar image of a large mass over the Arkansas town and said that hundreds of birds had died, reports the Associated Press. Other news reports indicate only “dozens” were found.

Finding the matter humorous, Chief Ballew laughed while he told Fox News, “I guess we could have an annual blackbird watch. People can just bring their umbrellas, open them up and walk through the neighborhood and hope they don’t get hit.”

Beebe would be better served by a more mature top cop who recognizes an environmental crime and seeks to investigate it, rather than laughing it off like a recalcitrant teenager.

Citing unnamed biologists, the AP continues to promote the myth that fireworks caused last year’s mass kill when 5,000 birds died, saying they were rousted by fireworks and then flew into buildings, cars and each other. That this never happened before during fireworks celebrations exposes AP’s faulty logic.

In Fracking the Life out of Arkansas, I postulated that mining operations may be to blame for the mass deaths last year that coincided with tens of thousands of dead drum fish in the Arkansas River.  The AP ignores the dead fish when promoting their fireworks myth, again refusing to let facts get in the way.

One Beebe resident thinks the mass kill is related to electromagnetism, posting a comment at KATV:

“[F]ire works going off ALL night and all day – no problems! There were more 500 LIVE ones in our yard this morning. BUT when the birds started dying, I had my compass out – it went crazy – spinning and unable to find north – it did this at two different times tonight.”

There’s one cell phone tower in Beebe; 4 private mobile towers, and 2 microwave towers, reports City Data. The city is only 4.32 square miles in area (with a population of around 5,000).

Last year, Natural News reported that the US Dept of Agriculture admits to killing millions of birds and other animals each year because it deems them a nuisance. That certainly would be one source of the avian holocaust; meanwhile, we’ve been keeping updates of mass animal kills from around the planet.

Whatever the cause – and it’s certainly not fireworks – we may only learn the true explanation when some credible whistle blowers come forward. Meanwhile, we’re stuck reading junk science from corporate media while our animals are dying.

UPDATE 1: At 4:30 AM on Jan. 2, CNN reported that an unnamed state wildlife spokesperson now claims that someone went into a blackbird roost and set off fireworks at 7 pm on Dec. 31, (resulting in 50 bird deaths) and again at midnight, resulting in 200 bird deaths. However, the fireworks ban was initiated at 7 pm, so this anonymous explanation makes little sense. Why won’t any scientists put their name to the fireworks explanation?