Tigers could benefit from green power schemes to curb encroachment into reserves (Image: F1 Online/Rex Features )
TWO great challenges of the 21st century – green energy and wildlife conservation – could have a symbiotic solution.
Michael McGuigan of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, has suggested that combining solar power plants with nature reserves could tackle both problems. A sanctuary for 300 tigers, for example, would cover a patch of land about 50 kilometres across. Surrounding this with a 5-kilometre-wide ring of solar panels would create a power plant producing 60 gigawatts of electricity (www.arxiv.org/abs/0902.4692).
“Surrounding a tiger sanctuary with a ring of solar…
