Hi,
According to Bill's original post it was the Town of Alabama, which
designated itself the lead agency for the EIS, that decided a breeding
bird survey was in order, and that is why he is looking at breeding
birds. Has there been a study or studies that showed breeding birds are
not affected by turbines or are we just assuming that? If it's the
latter, wouldn't it be better to collect data as Bill suggests, to
establish a baseline for any potential wind turbine project, so later
effects can be determined for any that are built? Only then can costs
and balances, and ways to mitigate the effect, be evaluated accurately
for the future, no?
There are more than two choices here - it isn't just turbines yes or
turbines no, some raptors taken out by wind power or thousands of brown
pelicans killed by oil. The goal should be developing choices that
minimize the damage to all these species. If turbines are going to be
built, we should want to site them and run them in ways that will
minimize avian and other animal mortality, whether from collisions or
breeding failure or anything else. It might be that limiting the times
of operation, or imposing specific height requirements, or mandating
that certain frequencies of rotation be avoided because they cause
ground vibration that causes nesting failure, or who knows what
relatively minor limitation, makes an enormous difference. But we will
never be able to figure that out without collecting data and, since the
answers are likely to vary a lot between areas inland and coastal,
lakeside and mountain ridge, desert and forested - that means a /lot /of
data will needed to get reliable answers.
Alicia
[email protected] wrote:
> My turn to get into this discussion.
>
> 1. Wind energy is an admirable technology to pursue.
> 2. Wind turbines do kill some birds, possibly fewer per tower than are
> killed by well-lit skyscrapers or cell phone towers.
> 3. The proposed breeding bird study was probably inadequate.
> 4. Breeding birds are not really the issue. Most of the song birds
> will stay well below the towers during breeding season and will
> probably adapt to the presence of the towers, as if they were giant
> trees moving in the wind. Higher flying birds larger birds might have
> collisions.
> The problem really lies with night migration where the birds do not
> see the turbines. That's when birds are most likely to collide with
> towers and propellers. The bird study should have been of migration at
> several seasons.
> 5. Very extensive research has been done on the effect of wind
> turbines on migrating birds at the *_Heligoland Bird Observatory in
> Germany._* Germany is planning to cover vast areas of the North Sea
> with wind farms and to that end Heligoland has been studying migration
> patterns through the area *_for years_*. The researchers there have
> also looked into proposed wind farms on the southerly side of the
> Strait of Gibralter, noting the relationship of migration to natural
> ridges (favored for wind farms) and valleys.
> 6. As a result of the German studies, towers have been located to
> minimize collision courses and provide avian passageways, without
> sacrificing power output.
> Go on line and read reports from Heligoland.
>
> Bob Gochfeld
> Brooklyn
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