Wind Turbines Kill a Few Birds

Guppy06 writes "The Houston Chronicle has an article about how a 7000-turbine windfarm in Altamont Pass, California (the world's largest collection) has killed an estimated 22,000 birds during the past 20 years or so of operation, 'including hundreds of golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, kestrels and other raptors(.)' There are efforts to keep the operators from renewing their permit until they take measures to protect bird populations. To put things in perspective the article goes on to point out that the Exxon Valdez spill is estimated to have killed around 250,000, while the whole story can just about be summed up by one quote by a biologist: 'When you turn on your lights you kill something, no matter what the source of electricity.'" Killing 3-4 birds per day doesn't seem too bad. It's a shame that larger, rarer birds are getting killed, but... How many birds would die from the acid rain that a coal power plant would cause?

Comments

I think it has something to do with location

[HerringFlavoredFowl]

I remember seeing something about it's location being in a migratory flight path and other wind projects did not have the same problem.

This is old and misleading news

[Tim2]

The Altamont story about wind farms killing birds is old news. While true, the story is misleading because the vast majority of wind farms are in very different settings with a much lower thread toi birds. A much more reasoned analysis can be found here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pardo/birds/archive/archive 2/msg00468.html

Nice quote

[geekoid]

"Researched by Wyoming-based Western EcoSystems Technology, the report contends that many more birds are killed annually in collisions with vehicles (60 million), window panes (98 million) and communication towers (4 million) than die nationwide in wind turbines (10,000 to 40,000).

Even the common household cat, wind power industry advocates argue, is responsible for more bird deaths than turbines"

heh, a little persective, there.

wind turbine fatalities

[phiala]

Out of curiousity, I checked the literature on the subject (by which I mean actual peer-reviewed biological journals), since most of the web sites a cursory search turned up appeared to be propaganda, either pro or con.

There isn't a whole lot, but here's some extra information (refs available on request):

Osborn et al. 2000
Minnesota, estimate 36 +/- 12 birds per year, less than one per turbine

Osborn et al. 1998 (same site):
Observed flight patterns, found that most bird flew above or below the turbine level

Johnson et al. 2002 (same site):
"We assessed effects of the wind farm on birds from 1996 to 1999, with 55 documented collision fatalities. Recovered carcasses included 42 passerines, 5 waterbirds, 3 ducks, 3 upland game birds, 1 raptor, and 1 shorebird."

De Lucas et al. 2004:
Straits of Gibralter, most birds altered flight path to avoid turbines

Several of these researchers seem to think that turbines do kill birds, but in very small numbers compared to other structural sources of mortality. (birds hit stuff, especially plate glass windows)

The problem is that it's easy to count dead birds at the base of turbines, but hard to count birds that died from most other sources of power...

Re:Solution ?

[Carnildo]

Exactly, and there are 7000 turbines, so that makes little over 3 birds killed per turbine in 20 years, or 0.157... birds/year/turbine! Compare this to other mechanical devices killing animals, like cars running over hedgehogs, boats knocking fish on the head, animals killed after Chernobyl, or insects on your wind-shield and I'm impressed, 22000 is pretty low.

As a quick comparison, in the past year, three birds have died after running into the living-room window in my house. Those turbines are downright safe!