Canadian Wind Turbine Kills 10 Birds and Bats a Day

Friday, August 06, 2010

Not all renewable energy sources are completely environmentally friendly. For instance, Canada’s Wolfe Island Eco-Power Centre2, the country’s second largest wind farm, has demonstrated itself to be a killer of birds and bats.

 
The first study of the 86 wind turbines found they killed 45 birds and 45 bats over a two-month period (May-June 2009). A second report (covering July-December 2009) documented 602 bird and 1,270 bat fatalities, or about three bird kills and seven bat kills a day. A third study (of the farm’s first eight months of operation) uncovered 1,962 bird and bat deaths, for a daily average of eight a day. Thirty-three different bird species were included in the fatality report.
 
In California, so many birds, including dozens of golden eagles, have collided with wind turbine blades at the Altamont Pass wind farm that it gained the nickname “Cuisinart of the Air.”
 
Wind energy proponents point out that far more birds are killed by power lines, pesticides and automobiles than by turbines, and that more recent turbines have been designed to be more bird and bat friendly.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
 
Birds, Bats, and the Trade-Offs of Wind Power (by Diane Katz, Fraser Forum) (pdf)

Comments

Not So Gullible 14 years ago
Compare the number of miles of highway and the number of cars on those roads to the number of turbines now in operation and duh... of course they do. As the number of turbine numbers increase, so will the number of bird and bat deaths. But let's analyze the wind energy proponents excuses... Birds and bats feed off insects and mosquitoes. Each eats up to their body weight a night in insects. Killing them means more bugs (and diseases like West Nile) and the need to increase the use of those pesticides. Regardless of the energy source, we need power lines. Which would you rather have - roads and cars or wind turbines which produce a very little energy intermittently at a very HIGH cost. It's not really free you know. ;o)
wiegand 14 years ago
The Turbine Peddlers Represent Green Fraud...........Message from a Wildlife Biologist There is growing worldwide opposition the deadly propeller style wind turbine for good reason. There has been a corporate/government cover-up for over 25 years concerning the extreme danger they pose to birds and bats. For those that have not seen it, take a look at the YouTube video “fatal accident with vulture on a windmill”. A Griffon Vulture gets smashed out of the sky by the innocent looking blades of a propeller style wind turbine. The wind turbine in the video is spinning at just 12 rpm or about half speed. After seeing this you will understand what is coming to the local and migratory bird populations, all over the world. In Canada, a recent study of bird and bat mortality at Wolfe Island’s 82-turbine wind farm found 600 birds and more than a thousand bats were killed by the windmill blades in a six-month period. None of this should come as a surprise. Over the last 25 years in Altamont Pass, more than 2,000 golden eagles have been killed by the blades of the propeller-style wind turbine. The corrupt wind/oil industry (they are one in the same) paid experts to say it was just an aberration and that Altamont was unique. It is a lie. The corrupt U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is part of this green fraud. They deliberately looked the other way while wind farms were built in the habitat of the condor and whooping crane. They chose not to prosecute many thousands of wind industry violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. They even helped write and pass the “No Surprises” clause into federal law, which gives this industry a free pass for killing endangered species. There is no difference between them and the corrupt MMS The most insidious impact from the use of propeller style wind turbines, is the slaughter of migratory Birds. The negative footprint from wind energy is far greater than the obvious. A perfect example is the Whooping Crane that travels 2500 miles only to be chopped up in the thousands of spinning blades along their migration route. The critically endangered Egyptian Vulture is another migratory victim of these turbines. Paid off experts fraudulently cite collisions with power lines as being the primary reason. This same fraudulent excuse was given for missing Condors in California. Now the condor is regularly fed at feeding stations far away from the turbines to keep them alive. Remember this.........when the propeller style wind turbine is introduced into their habitats, it becomes the number one cause of death for rare and endangered bird species. Despite deflective statements from the wind industry, cats, cars, windows, buildings, etc. are not the problem. These mortality factors did not kill off the Red Kite populations that have disappeared from Germany and Italy. The prop wind turbines have killed them off. At the current rate of wind farm development, dozens of bird species will soon face extinction from this diabolical source of energy. The truth is no bird or bat is safe around a propeller-style wind turbine and the cumulative impacts..... devastating. Regardless of how many are built, energy from the inefficient propeller style wind turbine will NEVER even come close to solving North America's energy needs. Communities need to be told this before they embrace these killers. Communities also need to be told that the day is coming when far superior wind turbines, without the flawed deadly propeller design, will be implemented across the world. How long this will take depends on how long the bird/bat mortality lie is perpetuated the wind industry. Below is factual information covered up by the wind industry and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for over 25 years. This came from a report put together by Ornithologists in Poland. The link for this report is on Poland's Wind Energy web site. To my knowledge it is the only example of the true bird mortality impact ever made public by the wind Industry. http://www.psew.pl/en/guidelines_for_assessment_of_wind_farms_impact_on_birds.htm 4. Development of wind projects is likely to cause: a. Bird mortality caused by collisions with operating turbines and/or elements of auxiliary infrastructure, in particular overhead power lines; b. Decrease in population due to loss and fragmentation of habitats caused by deterring effect of the wind turbines and/or development of communication and energy infrastructure related to operations of the wind turbines, c. Disturbance to populations, in particular to short- and long - range bird migrations (the barrier effect). 5. Mortality caused by collisions and loss of habitats are key in terms of likely adverse effects on birds populations. 6. The extent of effects on bird population is diversified, depending mainly upon the location of the wind turbines – from almost no or negligible effects on life expectancy of bird population, to significant effects with significant loss of habitats and high mortality caused by collisions. Most people are not aware that Europe has sustained large declines in both local and migratory bird populations over the last 20 years. These declines coincide with the installation of tens of thousands of propeller style wind turbines.

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