[Pollinator] Bird and bat collisions continue to perplex researchers

[Ladadams at aol.com]

WIND POWER: Bird and bat collisions continue to perplex researchers  
(Thursday, August  13, 2009) 
Scott Streater, special to  E&E 
A group of leading scientists and  wind power experts has joined forces to 
find out why so many birds and bats are  struck down each year by wind 
turbines and what can be done about it.  
Their task has urgency. In the next five years,  thousands of wind turbines 
are projected to be built across the country, thanks  to federal tax 
credits, grants and loans meant to expand renewable energy  sources and the 
environmentally friendly power they produce. 
But wind power has a decidedly unfriendly environmental side  to it, with 
already existing wind farms estimated by some researchers to kill  tens of 
thousands of birds and bats each year. 
Thirty researchers recently gathered at a meeting co-hosted by Cornell  
University to identify key areas where more research is needed. Many of the  
research questions are basic -- such as better understanding the migration  
patterns of birds and bats -- underscoring how little is known about why birds 
 and bats are drawn to spinning wind turbines. 
"We don't know enough right now to know how big of a concern it is,  
frankly," said Michael Burger, conservation and science director for Audubon New  
York and an ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "This group thinks 
it's  very important to figure that out, and then apply what we learn as 
wind power  develops in this country to make it as green as possible." 
The issue highlights perhaps the biggest obstacle to the  commerical-scale 
expansion of wind power: finding suitable places to site wind  turbines that 
can tower 240 feet high. 
Some  renewable energy projects, particularly proposals for solar power on 
federal  land in Southern California, have met stiff resistance from 
environmentalists  concerned about the effects to wildlife habitat. Wildlife issues 
have already  caused problems for wind farms in south-central Wyoming, 
where concerns about  impacts to sage grouse habitat have prompted at least one 
company to put the  brakes on a 300-megawatt wind farm (_Land Letter_ 
(http://www.eenews.net/Landletter/2009/08/06/1/) , Aug. 6). 
Studies show that wind  energy has the potential to supply as much as 20 
percent of the country's energy  needs. But in order to do that, millions of 
wind turbines would need to be  built, with the greatest concentrations 
stretching from Texas to Oregon. The  Bureau of Land Management already has a 
sizeable backlog of wind-power project  applications in Western states and as 
many as 200 locations have been identified  by developers for site testing of 
wind projects. 
"That portends a huge, massive expansion of wind development," said  
Douglas Johnson, a research statistician and senior scientist at the U.S.  
Geological Survey's Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center and a member of  the 
coalition. 
"They're going to be all over  the place," Johnson added. "If you're 
putting up a dozen of them it probably  doesn't matter so much where you site 
them. But if you're putting up thousands  of them, then a little bit of 
difference multiplied by thousands can add up to a  substantial difference."  
Dearth of information 
No one is sure exactly how many birds and bats are killed each  year when 
struck by wind turbines. But experts believe the number is very  high. 
Albert Manville, a wildlife ecologist  with the Fish and Wildlife Service's 
division of migratory bird management, has  estimated that as many as 
440,000 birds are killed by existing wind turbines  each year (_Land Letter_ 
(http://www.eenews.net/Landletter/2009/02/05/1/) , Feb. 5). A September 2007 
report, commissioned by the Wildlife Society  and written by Manville and other 
leading experts, concluded that wind energy's  negative impacts are often 
overlooked in the rush to expand renewable  energy. 
"There is a dearth of information on  which to base decisions regarding 
siting of wind energy facilities, their  impacts on wildlife, and possible 
mitigation strategies," the report  stated. 
One problem is that there are no  federal regulations governing the siting 
of wind farms with respect to birds and  bats. Rather, such decisions are 
based on voluntary industry guidelines devised  by FWS in 2002, and developers 
are not always required to complete pre-project  analyses of bird and bat 
impacts. 
But some  things are well known, including the fact that billions of birds 
migrate across  the United States each year using "the same wind currents 
that are most  beneficial for producing wind energy," Andrew Farnsworth, a 
postdoctoral  research associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and a member 
of the  coalition, said in a statement. 
That is  important, Farnsworth said, because those wind currents can be 
very specific  within a region. "We know that in some locations a small 
percentage of wind  turbines may cause the majority of bird and bat deaths," 
Farnsworth said. "As  wind power develops further, we need to know more about how 
placement, design  and operation impact birds and bats as well as how 
habitat and weather  conditions affect potential hazards."  
Possible solutions 
Ongoing research by FWS and the American Wind Energy Association,  however, 
holds promise for reducing the estimated tens of thousands of bat  
mortalities caused by wind turbines each year. 
The research shows that slowing turbine blades at night, when the wind  
speed are lowest but bats are most active, can cut mortalities by as much as 73 
 percent (_Land Letter_ (http://www.eenews.net/Landletter/2009/05/28/7/) , 
May 28). "That's something that looks very promising," said Johnson,  the 
USGS senior scientist. 
Still, experts say  more research is needed. One approach suggested by the 
coalition is to use radar  to track bird migration patterns. More 
bird-pattern studies are also necessary,  they say, to compare the effects of wind 
farms before and after they are  built. 
"Conducting this research will help  the wind industry make informed, 
science-based decisions about where future wind  energy projects can be built and 
how they can be operated to minimize the impact  on migrating wildlife, 
while still providing much-needed alternative energy,"  said John Fitzpatrick, 
director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  
Scott Streater is a freelance journalist based in  Colorado Springs, Colo. 
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Laurie Davies Adams
Executive  Director
Pollinator Partnership 
423 Washington Street, 5th  floor
San Francisco, CA  94111
415-362-1137
LDA at pollinator.org

_www.pollinator.org_ (http://www.pollinator.org/) 

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National Pollinator Week is June 21-27, 2010. 
Beecome  involved at _www.pollinator.org_ (http://www.pollinator.org/) 
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