[BCNnet] BCNNet: Bad news about wind plants and bat kills

[Birdchris at aol.com]

from a Sierra Club list serve I'm on. These turbines aren't located along a  
major migrations route. And I have to confess that I don't know what the 
designs  are like, but the point is, if bats are dying, birds likely are, too.
 
Christine Williamson
Chicago/Cook
_birdchris at aol.com_ (mailto:birdchris at aol.com) 
 
I've pasted below an abstract of the story about the large number  of
bats that were killed last fall at a new windplant in Alberta, Canada  -
the full article appeared in the Feb. 2006 issue of Windpower Monthly.  
I would be willing to send a low resolution scanned copy of this 2  page
article to anyone who requests it (about 400 KB in size).   

Although the full article indicated that 532 bat carcasses were  found,
presumably the actual mortality estimate would be far larger  since
researchers would have to account for the bat carcasses that  were
removed by scavengers and those missed by searchers.  For  comparison,
only 475 bat carcasses were found under the 44 turbines in WV  during
2003 - and the total mortality at that facility was estimated  to
involve between 2000 and 4000 bats.

The Summerview wind project has  39 turbines, so besides
misunderstanding that the carcasses found do not  indicate total
mortality, the author of this article must have trouble with  math in
stating that the per turbine bat kill was 7.7.  Also, she  wrongly cites
the mortality rate at the Mountaineer (WV) windplant as only 38  bats
killed/turbine when it exceeded 50 bats/turbine/year in 2003  according
to the biased "lowball" estimate reported by the windplant  owner's
consultants (who failed to follow their own research  protocols).  

As Dr. Merlin Tuttle has indicated in Bats magazine,  the actual bat
mortality at Mountaineer in 2003 was close to 100  bats
killed/turbine/year  (see:
http://www.safewind.info/pdf/Bats_windmills_BCI_article.pdf ).  
Apparently the author of the Windpower Monthly article also was
confused  about the mortality estimate of 38 bats per turbine for the WV
windplant in  2004 - which represented the estimate of the number killed
during just a 6  week study conducted by Bat Conservation International.

However, it was  very good that the owner of the Alberta windplant
immediately funded some  research involving a knowledgeable and
independent expert, which included  withdrawing some of this windplant's
turbines from production.  It will  be interesting to see what the data
shows about their effort to shut down  half of Summerview's turbines for
a short period to test whether that action  would reduce bat kill. 
Apparently it wasn't 100% effective since they  indicated that dead bats
were found under "locked" turbines.   

Industrial wind turbines currently are adding only a small fraction  of
the destruction of Alberta's wildlife and landscape caused by  another
energy source - oil sands (which is being mined in an  absolutely
horrendous manner).  Still, the cumulative threat to bats  from
industrial wind energy development has increased with this evidence  of
high bat mortality at a facility that is not located near  forested
habitat.  Unfortunately, the government of Alberta apparently  is adding
insult to injury by selling off ecologically important  and
publicly-owned grasslands to wind developers - see:  
http://www.aenweb.ca/node/695 .

For current update about bat and wind  turbine situation, check out 2
recent publications by Bat Conservation  International -
http://www.vawind.org/Assets/Docs/Battered.pdf (see box on p.  3)
and http://www.vawind.org/Assets/Docs/Key%20Issues%2001-06-06.pdf  .

Dan Boone
Maryland

Investigating mystery bat deaths in  Canadian wind farm

A leading Canadian power producer is launching two bat  research
programs after site monitoring at a southern Alberta wind farm  revealed
hundreds of bat mortalities. About 90% of the bodies were found  during
the fall migration in August and September. The mortalities  were
largely silver-haired and hoary bats, neither of which is a species  at
risk. The company is funding research to track bat behaviour and  hopes
the findings can be used to identify potential issues at other  sites.
Bat experts say to Windpower Monthly they are as surprised and  baffled
by the deaths at the Alberta site as the wind industry  is.
http://www.windpower-monthly.com/currentabstracts 

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