Wind Turbines kill birds and bats

Developers deny this, but the evidence is incontravertable. The articles below show this to be the case.

It is beyond belief that the pro wind lobby continually insist there is no case to answer in the face of the mounting evidence to the contrary.

It adds insult to injury, when you consider climate change is and will be unaffected by these machines and developers are making cash on the back of the un-necessary suffering of wildlife.

For those who insist birds are not killed by Wind Turbines here are a selection. These are not pleasant viewing.

• 10th March 2005 23:23 .......................... Red Kite, Aberystwyth This photo is of a juvenile Red Kite found under wind-turbines at a site near Aberystwyth. The left wing had been completely severed at the carpal joint. It appeared otherwise to be in good condition both bodily and in its plumage. The bird was still alive but has since been euthanased. This is the second such injury known at this site, the other occurred on 6th December 2002.
• viernes, 24th September 2004 23:23 ....... sliced_griffon_vultures_Navarra
• viernes, 24th September 2004 23:07 ....... Red_Kite_Germany
• viernes, 24th September 2004 23:07 ....... Everaert report - gulls
• viernes, 24th September 2004 23:17 ....... Everaert report - duck
• viernes, 24th September 2004 23:23 ....... smashed_griffon_vulture_Tarifa
• viernes, 11th June 2004 23:01 ................. beheaded_golden_eagle_Altamont_Pass
• sábado, 25th September 2004 1:58 ........ more_birdkill_pictures.txt
• viernes, 11th June 2004 23:01................. chopped_griffon_vulture_Navarre
• viernes, 11th June 2004 23:01................. another_dead_griffon_vulture_Tarifa
• sábado, 25th September 2004 1:54 ....... dead_griffon_vulture_Tarifa
• domingo, 8th May 2005 18:44 ............... short_toed_eagle_Navarre

These pictures can also be found on: iberica2000.org. DART would like to thank them for allowing the use of these images here.

Wildlife Related Press Articles

6th June 2005: Study: Bats killed at wind turbine sites CHARLESTON, W.Va. - A study of two wind energy farms in West Virginia and Pennsylvania estimates as many as 2,600 bats were killed by the whirling blades during a six-week period last year.

5th March 2005: Blow the power myths Mark Duchamp's letter to The Times - "...avian mortality for just 368 machines to be as follows: - 409 griffon vultures - 24 golden eagles, eagle owls, booted eagles, sparrow hawks and kestrels - 6,000 other birds, from doves to migrating songbirds - 650 bats.

11th February 2005: Bat deaths at wind farms alarm researchers ...the University of Maryland doctoral student turned up something unexpected amid the trees and rolling ridges of Backbone Mountain: hundreds of bat carcasses, some with battered wings and bloodied faces. "It was really a shock," Kerns said. Thousands of bats have died at Backbone and on another nearby wind farm in Meyersdale, Pa. --more per turbine than at any other wind facility in the world, according to researchers' estimates.

9th February 2005: Bats dying en masse near turbines ...“They collected what they could, and I had a cooler of 98 dead bats waiting for me,” Kerns said. At the time, Kerns was stationed in Frostburg to survey dead birds at the Mountaineer and the Meyersdale wind farm in Pennsylvania for wind power and wildlife consultants Curry & Kerlinger, LLC.

4th January 2005: Wind turbines taking toll on birds of prey ...massive fiberglass blades on the more than 4,000 windmills have been chopping up tens of thousands of birds that fly into them, including golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls and other raptors.

January 25th 2004: Wind farms threaten the red kite At first, it was dismissed as another routine, if tragic, death. The dismembered body of one of Britain's rarest birds, the red kite, had been found on a remote hillside, its right wing efficiently severed.

Altamont Pass is the most lethal wind farm in N. America for raptors.

Dead raptors at Altamont Turbines

Download Mark Duchamp's compilation of truthful windfarm-birdkill statistics here. A fuller version of the report can be found here.

See "unexpected bat kills threaten future wind farm" (Scientific American: When Blade Meets Bat [ECOLOGY])

Not only indigenous bats but birds, particularly raptors, but migrating birds.

In the US bats in some parts of the country show an unexplained tendency to collide with the blades of wind turbines.

See also this article: Enviro Group Sues Wind Farm to Stop Bird Deaths

Preliminary Study Tackles Wind Power, Bat Issues Over the course of the bird study, researchers also found 475 dead bats. Jim Lindsey, who is the principal environmentalist for FPL, said the total bat mortality rate over the two-month period of the bird study at Mountaineer is statistically closer to 2,000 bat kills.

More bird kill information and statistics here.

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