Birds & Wind Farms
Below is a brief article written by an American friend of Dorset Energized – we have published it as it addresses issues and concerns relevant to the UK and of course Dorset.
There has been a considerable amount of publicity recently about wind farms killing birds. While it is important that new industries do everything possible to keep their footprints small wind farm impact should be considered in comparison to other human impacts. The paragraph below gives some numbers.
Estimates (of wind farm kills) range as high as 880,000, Hutchins said. The number of deaths related to wind farms might seem insignificant when compared with U.S. Fish and Wildlife estimates of other sources of bird mortality. Collisions with buildings might kill 97 million to 976 million birds annually, and collisions with vehicles 60 million, according to the federal agency. As many as 72 million birds might die of pesticide and other poisoning annually, and cats are fierce predators of songbirds, killing an estimated 39 million birds annually in Wisconsin alone, according to one study.
Here’s an article about a new lawsuit against wind farms.
Habitat destruction is also a major concern for birds was well as other animals. Here’s an article from Cornell U. about the threat to 3 billion birds due to development of North America’s boreal forests.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/05/threats-seen-3-billion-birds-vast-canadian-forest
The lawsuit in the first article is being filed because the birds named are golden eagles, an iconic species. But other birds are just as deserving of consideration. I see no lawsuits about finding some way to protect birds from flying into buildings or from well fed fat domestic cats allowed to roam free by thoughtless owners, etc. It is important to hold new industries to strong standards but it would also be nice to see this amount of attention being paid to the many ways we kill far more birds.
John W. Olver
