I. FLORA AND FAUNA
Aspens
IN A BACKYARD LABORATORY IN THE FOOTHILLS OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, where trembling aspens were declining and refusing to display their colours in the fall, Katie Haggerty decided to find out what would happen if she shielded some of them from radio waves. After just two months, her shielded seedlings were 74 percent longer, and their leaves 60 percent larger than either her unshielded seedlings or her mock-shielded seedlings. And in the fall, only her shielded seedlings displayed the bright colours for which aspens are famous. (Haggerty 2010)
Songbirds
At Germany’s University of Oldenburg, scientists who were shocked to find that the migratory songbirds they were studying were no longer able to orient toward the north in spring and toward the southwest in autumn, decided to find out what would happen if they shielded an aviary from radio waves. Suddenly the birds were able face north in spring for migration. (Engels et al. 2014)
Amphibians
On a fifth floor apartment’s terrace in Barcelona, a block away from a cell tower, Alfonso Balmori decided to test his conjecture that radio waves might be responsible for the worldwide decline and extinction of so many species of amphibians. For two months he cared for two identical tanks of tadpoles, one of which was shielded from radio waves by a thin layer of fabric. The mortality in the unshielded tank was 90%, and in the shielded tank only 4%. (Balmori 2006)