Friends of Merrymeeting Bay will focus on potential dangers to bats, birds and other wildlife in its latest Winter Speaker Series presentation

Retired United States Fish and Wildlife Biologist Al Manville will present “My Life for the Birds and Bats” at an event set for 7 p.m., March 8, via Zoom. The link to the presentation is available at fomb.org.

Structures such as communication towers, commercial wind turbines, utility-scale solar facilities, power transmission and distribution lines, building glass and windows, lighting and commercial fishing gear, among others, can result in serious consequences to migratory birds and other wildlife, according to a news release announcing the presentation. These include collisions, disorientation, barotrauma, electrocution, entanglement, attraction, habitat disturbance and fragmentation.

Manville will discuss these structures and their impacts-including at the population level-ongoing efforts to work with the related industries and best practices available to avoid or minimize negative consequences. He will also discuss the recent interest and growing public awareness involving impacts from non-thermal, non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation to wildlife.

Manville has served as a senior lecturer/adjunct professor for the advanced academic programs’ environmental sciences and policy division, Johns Hopkins University for 22 years — teaching classroom and field classes in ecology, terrestrial and marine conservation biology, and wildlife management. Additionally, he served as a branch chief and as the senior wildlife biologist with the Division of Migratory Bird Management, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, for 17 years as their national lead on anthropocentric causes of bird mortality from structures, including impacts from radiation, collision, and electrocution.

Manville chaired the Communication Tower Working Group, a wind turbine working group, and a waterbird bycatch working group, and co-chaired the Interagency Seabird Working Group, represented the Service on the Wildlife Workgroup of the National Wind Coordinating Collaborative, on the Avian Power Line Interaction Committee (APLIC), was a technical scientific advisor to the Wind Energy Federal Advisory Committee, and was the Service’s technical advisor to the Bird-Safe Glass Working Group.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in zoology, a master’s in natural resources and wildlife management and a doctorate in wildlife ecology and management. He has studied and handled over 100 black bears; assessed brown bear-human interactions in Alaska; conducted six summers of field research in the Aleutian Islands on the impacts of marine debris on seabirds, sea lions, and seals; and studied impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on seabirds for five years. Manville has also served as executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club, and a member of the steering committee for the Endangered Species Coalition.

In 1999, he received the Conservation Service Award from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt for his bird conservation efforts with the electric utility industry. Al has testified over 40 times before Congress and related bodies; conducted numerous research efforts globally; published more than 175 professional and popular papers, chapters, and book reviews; and given more than 160 invited presentations.

FOMB hosts its Winter Speaker Series October through May on the second Wednesday of each month. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the series continues via Zoom.

Speaker Series presentations are free and open to the public. Visit fomb.org to see speaker biographies, full event schedules, video recordings of past presentations, become a member or learn more about Merrymeeting Bay and the Gulf of Maine.

For more information, contact FOMB at (207) 666-3372 or edfomb@comcast.net.