| Wind is one of the healthiest energy options, and the most compatible with animals and humans. Wind has some minor wildlife impacts, but they are small compared to other electric generation choices.
The modern wind turbine is far less harmful to birds than are radio towers, tall buildings, airplanes and vehicles and numerous other manmade objects. Bird deaths due to wind development will never be more than a very small fraction of those caused by other commonly-accepted human activities. Summaries of available wind studies can be found at www.currykerlinger.com and www.nationalwind.org.
Avian studies at wind farm sites show that bird
kills per turbine average two to five per year
or less, with the exception of a single three-turbine
plant in Tennessee that has recorded eight per
turbine per year. These include sites passed
by millions of migrating birds each year. At
some sites, no kills have been found at all.
A reasonable, conservative estimate is that of every 10,000 human-related bird deaths in the U.S. today, wind plants cause less than one. Even if wind were used to generate 100% of U.S. electricity needs, at the current rate of bird kills, wind would account for only one of every 250 human-related bird deaths. Leading human-related causes of bird kills, in the U.S. alone, include:
- cats (1 BILLION per year)
- buildings (100 million to 1 BILLION per year)
- hunters (100 million per year);
- vehicles (60 million to 80 million per year)
- communications towers (10 million to 40 million per year)
- pesticides (67 million per year)
- power lines (10,000 to 174 million per year)
The wide ranges cited for other sources of avian deaths reflect the low level of research work done on those sources - wind energy is the most thoroughly studied by far. In most areas of the U.S., wind power plants also kill small numbers of bats. However, new wind power plants on ridgelines in Appalachia (Pennsylvania and West Virginia) have been experiencing bat kills in numbers much larger than elsewhere. The reasons for this problem, which first occurred in 2003, are being studied by a research partnership formed by the wind industry, Bat Conservation International, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Researchers hope to find ways to reduce bat mortality at these sites. |
