SOLAR STUDENTS' SOARS : NOTES PRECIS

 

THE NYTIMES picture shows Lee Walston, a landscape ecologist conducting a plant survey with students at Anoka County Solar in Ramsey.

A possible solar bonus : '' Wildlife habitat. '' Sites can welcome plants, insects, even mammals, but some developers balk.

The glass panels stand in a meadow. Wildflowers, sway in the breeze, bursts of purple, pink, yellow, orange and white among native grasses. A monarch butterfly flits from one blossom to the next, Dragonflies zip, bees hum and goldfinches trill.

As projects unfurl across the United States and even the world, sites like this one in Ramsey, Minn., stand out because they offer a way to fight climate change while also tackling another ecological crisis : a global biodiversity collapse, driven in large part by habitat loss.

The sun's clean energy is a powerful weapon in the battle against climate change. But the sites that capture that energy take up land that wildlife needs to survive and thrive.

Solar farms could blanket billions by billions acres of land all over the world, just so in the coming decades.

The World Students Society thanks Catrin Einhorn.