An Illinois utility is working to protect birds, as it extends power to rural and remote areas. Ameren Illinois' program involves beefing up lines and other structures to keep birds from coming into contact with high voltage.
Riley Adams is a Manager with Ameren's Avian Protection program, and says humans and animals benefit.
"It protects the bird, plus is also eliminates outages for the customer. And it's not an individual outage on the cusomer, it's an outage for the entire circuit. So we try to eliminate that, it's better for the bird and better for the customer."
Over the last eight years, Ameren has installed 92-thousand bird safe poles and has increased the space between high voltage wires so large birds of prey can't touch two wires at the same time and get electrocuted.
Between 2017 and 2019 Ameren says the program has led to a 39 percent reduction in customer outages in Ameren Illinois' 43-thousand square mile service area.
To learn more about the program, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?