The Avian Power Line Interaction Committee (APLIC) was officially formed in 1989 as a partnership involving the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Audubon Society, and 10 electric utilities.  Nebraska Public Power District was one of the charter members of APLIC.  The committee was originally formed to address the problem of bird collisions with power lines.  A primary stimulus to forming the committee was the collision of whooping cranes, sandhill cranes, waterfowl, and other birds with lines in the San Luis Valley of Colorado.  In 1994 APLIC published “Mitigating Bird Collisions With Power Lines: The State of the Art in 1994”, which has been widely distributed to utility companies and State and Federal agencies.  A companion publication “Suggested Practices For Raptor Protection on Power Lines; The State of the Art in 1996”, also developed by APLIC in 1996, provides techniques for reducing bird electrocutions at electric utility structures. 

Today APLIC members include representatives from the Edison Electric Institute, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, 23 individual electric utilities, two Federal utility agencies, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Rural Utilities Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  APLIC is an excellent example of how government and private industry can work cooperatively to address conservation issues.