Birds, Bats And Wind Power, Too

Can wind power and birds just get along? A gathering of top scientists thinks it's no mere flight of fancy.

Wind poweris a wedge issue among people who all may rightfully claim to be environmentalists. Those who advocate for renewable energy and those for wildlife and habitat conservation often stand on the same side of many environmental issues, but this has often not been the case when it comes to wind energy.

While bird mortality due to turbines may be lessened by improved designs that feature slower blade rotation, and while others question the severity of the problem compared to other causes of bird death, the hazard is not to be dismissed. Migration patterns of birds -- and of bats, too -- tend to take advantage of precisely the same patterns of wind flow that produce good sources of energy. 

Enter the recently announced coalition of experts. Including representatives from research universities as well as from the public and private sectors, their shared goal is to bring more robust data sets and analyses to better define the extent of the risks and to guide mitigation efforts.

Chief among their priorities: to gather an improved picture of actual bird mortality at wind farm sites; to develop richer bird and bat population, distribution, and migration data; to observe and document  animal-turbine interactions as they may vary with local weather and topographic conditions; and to build upon their findings in standardizing wind farm siting and mitigation practices.

With a successful outcome of the work group's efforts, we may find more people enthusiastically on board with a growing source of energy that's clean and cheep too.

(photocredit: South Point Wind Farm by Harvey McDaniel, via Wikimedia Commons)