This just in: barbed wire is bad for sage grouse. Not to demean that noble, fascinating and nice-tasting avian, but darn near everything poses hazards to it, owing largely to its chunky physique, limited flying ability and relatively slow running speed.

Yet while its habitat, the sagebrush flats and grasslands of the American West, was tamed by "bobwire" more than a century ago, those birds — the males of which puff up bright orange air sacs and make deep-baritone hoots while doing a springtime mating dance — still proliferate in many states.

But it's a precarious existence, what with hunters of the four-legged and two-legged variety, industrial and housing-development incursions on their territory and, more recently, the blossoming of wind farms. Declining populations have juxtaposed their future with that of renewable energy.

The propellers of wind turbines, some more than 100 feet in diameter, and reaching high speeds in high winds, pose threats of more than one kind: Few of the lumbering birds might fly high enough to be struck by the generator blades, but scientists are finding that sage grouse, prairie chickens and related birds fear tall structures where hawks, eagles and other predators might roost.

Thus the ongoing challenge of creating nonpolluting and renewable energy — while minimizing environmental impacts. And thus the compound concern raised by the recent report on barbed wire: Should the wind-power people say what the heck; if those birds are being endangered by fences, maybe they're doomed anyway, so let's keep putting up the turbine towers?

No, not in these environmentally sensitive times. Whether or not a Wyoming Game and Fish Department study shows evidence that a gross of grouse flew into just one five-mile stretch of fence in only seven months, that might prove to be a separate issue — one that might turn the llano of New Mexico and other Western openland into the scene of, what, brightly colored plastic ribbon clipped to fence wire?

As for wind farms, they're already drawing disapproval — on aesthetic as well as environmental grounds. In their current form, they don't suit some folks' ideas of what the wide, open spaces should be. Those of a not-in-my-back-yard bent are finding useful allies among bird-lovers.

The wind-energy companies aren't exactly adversaries: They've been well aware for several years that certain mountain passes and other stretches are bird-migration routes; their planning has included such considerations.

Most recently, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Wind Advisory Committee, members of which include energy leaders, have added to their bird-migration planning a set of buffer zones around sage-grouse breeding grounds.

Smart move; if the wind-advisory group can come up with voluntary guidelines for grouse, as well as for other potential wind-farm victims, they might avoid heavier-handed regulations that some enviros are advocating.

Meanwhile, the emerging awareness of barbed wire as sage-grouse hazard might give the wind industry the diversion it needs to keep bird protection in the voluntary camp.