Wind turbines kill too many birds and bats. How can we make them safer?
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
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Even the greeniacs are starting to understand the damage to wildlife from wind turbines:
As wind power grows around the world, so does the threat turbines pose to wildlife. From simple fixes to high-tech solutions, researchers are finding ways to reduce the toll.
About twice a month, many of Australia’s wind farms receive an important visit from dogs and their handlers. The dogs are professionals and know exactly what they’re there for. Eagerly, they run along transects under the wind turbines, sniffing until they catch a scent, then lying down, sitting or freezing once they’ve located their targets: the carcasses of bats and birds that were killed by turbine collisions.
For nearly two decades, wind and wildlife ecologist Emma Bennett’s company, Elmoby Ecology, has been using canines to count the victims of wind turbines in southern Australia. The numbers are troubling. Each turbine yields four to six bird carcasses per year, part of an overall death toll from wind turbines that likely tops 10,000 annually for the whole of Australia (not including carcasses carried away by scavengers). Such deaths are in the hundreds of thousands in North America. Far worse are the numbers of dead bats: The dogs find between six and 20 of these per turbine annually, with tens of thousands believed to die each year in Australia. In North America, the number is close to a million.
In fact, some experts predict that turbine collisions could drive certain bat species to extinction. “It’s the No. 1 threat facing our small microbats,” Bennett says.
Numbers like these have caused strife in environmentalist circles, pitting those pushing for a rapid buildout of renewable energy — necessary to combat climate change — against those who oppose turbines due to their impact on wildlife; some bird conservation groups have frequently obstructed wind energy projects.
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The article asks how we can make wind turbines safer.
I would suggest we start by imposing punitive fines on any wind farms who do not take adequate precautions.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
If we’re not careful. UK will soon look like that photo!!
How to stop the slaughter? Cut the f***ing things down!
Since when did the industrial scale slaughter of Birds and Bats, by the million, become ‘Clean Green’ energy?
Every year in Spain alone — according to research by the conservation group SEO/Birdlife — between 6 and 18 million, yes million, birds and bats are killed by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds.
The Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagle is at the point of extinction due to wind farms. Recent research from around the world indicates horrific bird mortality rates:-
Spain – 330 Birds per turbine per year
Germany – 309 Birds per turbine per year
Sweden – 895 Birds per turbine per year
When will the wind industry be forced tell us the appalling truth?
And before the absurd is mentioned, I’ve never seen an eagle, gannet or fulmar killed by a cat, car windscreen, or kitchen window!
Electricity is required to make the turbines work…interesting that electricity okay for turbines, and charging EVs, but not when used for everyday household matters.
The absurd is one of the favourite responses of proponents of wind power when the death toll of birds is mentioned. It’s true that cats, cars etc. kill more birds than turbines but these are almost always small species with high reproduction rates whose populations can withstand a high mortality rate not the larger slowly reproducing species killed by turbines. Wilful ignorance is the politest way to describe the eco loons repeated use of the cats kill more birds response.
Paul is always a kindly, gentle soul.
I would suggest a more decisive method, using Net Zero “Environ Mentalists” strapped to the blades ( thus three per turbine) to shout warnings to any approaching birds or bats.
Change to a new team every twelve hours. I’m sure they would be keen to help.
If not, tough.
How to make ’em safer? Take ’em down.
Indeed!
https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1851391/court-orders-dismantling-french-wind-farm-bird-deaths
“A court of appeal in Nîmes, France, has ordered the dismantling of an operational wind farm due to the threat it poses to local ecology including golden eagles in the area. In a ruling published on 7 December, the Nîmes appeal court upheld a previous decision that demanded the immediate “demolition of all the wind turbines” and restoration of the site within 15 months.
Daily fines of €3,000 are to be paid by developer Energies Renouvelables du Languedoc-Valeco, a subsidiary of German energy company EnBW, if it does not comply with the demolition order. The onshore wind farm was commissioned in 2016 and is located near the southern town of Lunas in Languedoc, France.
It has been the subject of a series of legal proceedings brought by residents and conservation groups, with the latter arguing that it was directly harmful to wildlife in the area, including golden eagles.”
Two or three strands of det cord wrapped round the base works every time!
Just remove 90% of the securing bolts around the base – the next windy day will do the rest!
Make them Safer?
“No energy source comes anywhere close to killing as many raptors as wind energy does.
No other energy source is allowed to pick up bodies of rare and protected species from around their production sites on a day-to-day basis, year-in and year-out.
No other energy producer has a several thousand-mile mortality foot print, like wind energy has.
No other Energy source has rigged their research and turned a fleet of experts into w****s like the wind industry has.
No other energy source has been given a free pass to conduct their business in such a manner and change any law that could limit their destruction.”
Save The Eagles International
So
NOW
the ecofascists are concerned about the numbers of birds/bats slaughtered by turbines
If only they would have looked at evidence given to them over the past 20 years
(sarc)
I wrote to the RSPB about solar and wind turbine threats to wildlife and their reply amounted to the usual “nothing to see here..!” . Yet they go ballistic when one dead Hen Harrier is found on a hunting estate.
The standard claim by environmental groups is that we need renewable energy, just in the right places. Sadly they never say where the right place is, I could make a few suggestions involving a certain orifice.
The wrong place is the sky.
10 Years ago
https://news.ucdenver.edu/study-shows-wind-turbines-killed-600000-bats-last-year/
Sent this to the BBC environmentalists years ago but they weren’t concerned.
How can we make them safer? … explosives?
Two words: chicken wire.
300-400′ high chicken wire fences around wind farms should do the trick.
It’s always been that simple. But Greens couldn’t be bothered.
Those folk who think there’s a ‘de facto’ ban on onshore wind farms in England ain’t seen nothing yet.
We should all demand that no wind turbine be permitted unless it complies with this solution ….
Obviously being painted a bright colour will suddenly enable bats to detect them with sonar. Morons isn’t a strong enough word to describe these ‘researchers’.
The tip of a large turbine blade travels around 200mph. The birds/bats have no chance whatsoever.
The current fat arrogant slob erm sorry CEO of the RSPB (Beccy Speight) bitched about the proposed Sizewell C Nuclear Plant (not knowing where it actually is to be located) but does sweet FA about wind turbines taking down Cormorants, Eagles, Swans etc.
The busiest bird migration route from mainland Europe to the UK is over Dungeness Kent …..so they built a wind farm there and then to prove what bastards they are they try to bribe the locals
https://www.rwe.com/en/press/rwe-renewables/2023-02-03-little-cheyne-court-wind-farm-supporting-local-community-groups-/
I hate these people with a passion….first against the wall.
See also my diatribe from February last year:
Belated thanks for publishing that JIT. Perhaps the RSPB should be candidates for “Hypocrites of the Year” award
I can only concur Ray, brings to mind the fact that the RSPB erected an unsightly wind turbine at their site in Sandy Beds in order to provide green energy!
This appeared in Knowable Magazine dated 11.08.2023 by Katarina Zimmer.
It has been so long ago I can’t remember the first story about turbine blades killing bats. I suspect it was shortly after September of 2008 because that is when I got a DSL connection to the internet.
However in the 1850s the the Halladay Windmill began its apparence in the mid-west of the USA.
Halladay’s Revolutionary Windmill – Today in History: August 29 – Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project
Not long after a farm dog dragged the first kills to the back porch so as to gnaw on the carcass in shade.
Okay – just made up that last part. 🙂
Get rid of them, maybe?
Better still. SCRAP the worthless hydrocarbon consuming alters to crass stupidity and cut of the money supply to the grey men in the shadows who are behind their very existence……and hear them scream!
On a serious note, I wonder whether wind turbines with a vertical axis might be more visible to birds and bats. Its maximum velocity would be a lot lower as well. These designs seem to have fallen by the wayside due to lower efficiency, but they would also have a longer lifespan than the horizontally-mounted bird chopper type.
WHALES and marine mammals : on US windfarm protest group FB pages they discuss “Incidental Harassment Authorizations” stats
.. https://www.facebook.com/groups/788743669273727/posts/830574235090670
“Incidental take under the Marine Mammal Protection Act is non-intentional, accidental death or injury that occurs when you are carrying out an otherwise lawful activity”
When you add up all the annual Incidental Takes they have given permits for they add up to huge numbers eg 100%, 200%, 300% of SOME species numbers
Surely the actual number of injuries/deaths can’t be anything like those in the permits.
FB group : New England Offshore Wind Discussion
Some years ago, an evening program for the West Virginia Wildflower Pilgrimage featured a bat study. West Virginia has a number of rare/endangered species of bats inhabiting our numerous caves. He spoke about the white nose fungus problem.
However, during the question period, he was asked about the numerous bat deaths due to wind turbines which were becoming prevalent. His answer was sobering. The bats are not hit by the blades. Rather they find that air pressure differences from by the moving blades is causing the bats’ lungs to burst. This might also be the answer for birds.
Guess this is the environmentalists saving the world one dead bat at a time.
How about this with vertical axis. The rotor blades move at lower speed. https://seatwirl.com/
Sounds like PR trickery
The internet is full of magical thinking
If such devices worked, corps would be building them and not demanding subsidies.