Shooting Birds with Lasers? Don’t Worry, It’s to Save Their Lives

In what sounds like an epic game of Duck Hunt in real life, the skies of Hawaii are now protected by a grid of thirty focused green lasers. The laser grids are being mounted on the countries electricity poles in a bid to save birds from crashing into the cables.

The “light fence” as it is known was installed earlier this week as a potentially cheaper alternative to burying their power lines underground. With endangered species such as the Newell’s Shearwater and the Hawaiian Petrel often flying into the cables at night, something had to be done to protect the islands wildlife.

Over the next few weeks the team behind the laser installation will be trying out different colours of laser light to find out which one works best at detracting the birds from the lines. The team will be using frequencies that present no danger to the human eye, or of course bird eyes, but it still sounds weird that they’re going to be shooting birds with laser beams.

No word on upgrading the system in the case of alien invasion.

Thank you Slashgear for providing us with this information.