Winners and Losers of Desert Green Energy
By Robert Louis Chianese
Solar installations and urban sprawl in the Mojave have helped raven numbers soar at the cost of vulnerable prey.
This Article From Issue
January-February 2026
Volume 114, Number 1
Page 28
The four majestic deserts in the American Southwest extend for 137,700,000 hectares. To casual visitors, these deserts might look like blank spaces or forbidding wastelands. Yet they support thousands of species of plants and hundreds of bird, reptile, mammal, and insect species, all living in tense interdependence. Then humans entered the picture, upsetting the delicate balance.
QUICK TAKE
- Transmission line towers channeling green energy across the Mojave Desert offer ravens new perches for spotting their prey: the desert tortoise.
- Past remediation efforts to slow raven population growth, such as scaring off colonies and destroying eggs, have had limited success.
- Humans gave ravens an advantage, but it’s unclear how far we are willing to go to suppress this native bird species and bring the desert tortoise back from the brink.
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