Wind energy and bird mortality
Wind energy: A rather curious letter recently appeared on the Tulsa World editorial page, "Wind Turbines," by Jim Wiegand, Redding, CA. Weigand has no ties with Tulsa and the letter contained an editor: "Wiegand is a nationally recognized natural biologist and expert on the effects of wind turbines on birds." A search shows that Mr. Weigand has a biology degree from the 70s and earns his living by selling antiques. He has done nothing that would qualify him as an expert in wildlife biology, and none of his claims, here or elsewhere, are supported by credible research. His job is writing letters to newspapers and posting comments on websites that are critical about wind energy. The letter began with: "The wind industry hides massive genocide with regard to birds and bats. The industry has set up fraudulent death studies and received voluntary guidelines to hide the slaughter." The letter never mentioned birds again, but criticized wind energy and conspiracy theories.
Wind turbines sometimes kill birds and bats, but genocide of birds? In other of his writings, Mr. Wiegand claims that windmills are responsible for dozens of Whooping Crane deaths and that they will cause their extinction within five years. So far, not one Whooping Crane death can be attributed to windmills. Carla Gilbert challenged the danger for similar birds in a post to the article. "When I was traveling in Portugal a few years ago, we could see many wind farms from the highway. We were told that the storks want to build their nests on top. When the bus stopped to refuel, I took pictures of the seated storks on their nests on top of the turbines and saw several storks coming and going from their nests. I didn't see any injured or dead birds. "And the storks don't die out due to the windmills. A falconer, initially concerned about windmills, now places his falconry on wind turbines and does not consider them a greater threat to birds than his window.
There has been a lot of opposition to windmills and renewable energy in general, so it is hard to know if all criticism is factual. Studies have found around five to eight birds dead birds per windmill. That is approximately the number of birds that are in a display window each year. When you add the birds killed by cars and by hunting, it seems that other human activities pose a greater threat to the genocide of birds than wind turbines. For birds, the main threats are windows, cats, climate change, diseases, hunters, and pesticides.
There are concerns about protected species such as small prairie chickens and eagles. There are severe penalties for damaging eagles, so to be sure, windmill owners apply for permits to legally kill eagles. That has caused quite a fuss, but recently the government has given the companies a 30-year moratorium on enforcing protection laws while they are studying the problem. It seems unlikely that an eagle would fly in a windmill, mainly because another criticism is about the noise that windmills make. Yet there are confirmed reports that 85 bald eagles have been killed by windmills in the last five years, about 17 a year. Eagles are at the top of the food chain, so any environmental pollutant is likely to be harmful to them, and DDT was the main cause of their population decline. After DDT was banned and protected, their population has been restored to around 140,000 in North America and removed from the endangered species list. They are damaged by many pollutants related to energy production - around 280 were killed by the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It is a shame when one of the beautiful birds is accidentally killed. If we stopped activities that could harm them, we would have to cease much of our energy production.
The concern about the smaller prairie chicken is that they avoid high structures and windmills can cause them to move out of their normal habitat. Prairie chickens come together to mate and bring in a large common area called a leak. An enterprising oil company, unlike wind energy, drove a group of reporters to a leak in the Osage Hills to show them what could be lost if windmills were built, as if driving a van full of reporters around their leak was not about to disturb them. Many of the problems with wildlife and noise can be addressed by where the windmills are located, and reasonable laws are needed to see that the windmills will disturb animals and humans as little as possible.
Research shows that the actual evidence of the killing of birds by windmills is greatly exaggerated. In the Journal of Applied Ecology Volume 49, Issue 2, pages 386-394, April 2012, the authors found the impact of wind farms on bird populations to be minimal, with the greatest impact during construction than during subsequent operations. Extensive bird mortality research in Canada found that most human-related bird mortality (around 99%) is caused by wild and domestic cats, collisions with buildings and vehicles, and electricity transmission and distribution lines. A related peer-reviewed study of bird mortality says their data suggests that <0.2% of the population of each species is currently affected by death or relocation due to the development of wind turbines. They concluded that although the number of windmills is expected to grow ten times over the next two decades, "population-level effects on bird populations are unlikely, provided that highly sensitive or rare habitats, as well as concentration areas for endangered species, are avoided."
Mr. Wiegand's letter is mostly fiction. Some people cannot see the value or beauty of windmills and look for an excuse to criticize them.
