LED Lighting May Impact Wildlife Negatively

There is some evidence that small birds can see the flicker of LED lights:

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/106708#comment1144555

I read this article a couple of times, and it talks about some unspecified "impacts" on ground-dwelling beetles and spiders by LED lighting. It's not at all clear what these effects are or if there was any comparison testing with done tungsten lighting.

It's very short on details. I don't think I can get too excited about it.

Sometimes we worry too much about the little stuff.

To quote..

“We are making fundamental changes to the way we light the night-time environment, with potentially profound consequences for a range of species,” said Dr. Thomas Davies, of the Environment and Sustainability Institute at the University of Exeter.

The magic word..."potentially"...

So no proof as yet I take it!

This sound like a report generated by a university that has loads of money thrown at it by manufacturers of incandescent lamps, to rubbish LED's.

To use the word "potentially", means that there is no really hard evidence, they are trying even in the early stages to prove their worth to the backers, and last but not least, they will milk this cow for all it's worth!

Well done University of Exeter.... take a bow!

More likely it's an attempt to attract research funding from NERC I thought, but a little research finds is a European Research Council one with about 2 months of funding left to run, http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/98090_en.html

https://www.exeter.ac.uk/esi/people/researchandtechnical/davies/

https://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/esi/pdfs/ECOLIGHT_Concertina_12pp_FINAL.pdf

"plants and other animals"?

"May"...

Del

This sounds interesting but not alarming. Interesting in that it implies avenues for more research on our ecosystem.

LED lights do a very efficient job of producing the very narrow band of light our eyes perceive. The risk to spiders maybe that they perceive this narrow band of light, too. However, their prey may not perceive these same wavelengths. Thus the spiders that adapted to the broad spectrum of night lights previously used may now not hunt or trap as successfully.

After I switch to LED bulbs, the house dwelling lizard are all gone?

Good? No, now I have plenty of mosquitoes to eradicate. House lizard are natural predator's of mosquitoes, cockroach, flies etc.

Does this mean's end of their specie?

or will this be effective also on their kind of specie, like crocodiles and alligators for perimeter lighting? someone has to try?

Last summer I did a DIY LED conversion of my old yard light.

I put seven 60 watt equivalent LED's in it. (~35 watts total and way brighter than the old 250 watt equivalent, 85 watt actual, CFL bulb ever was on a good warm summer night).

Bugs and spiders seem to like it here given the mess it has inside the lens now.