Will Windmill Farms Safeguard Wildlife?

LAST WEEK British Prime Minister Gordon Brown set out goals to increase renewable-energy use in Britain tenfold by 2020. Brown's vision for a "green revolution" is heavily reliant on wind power, with plans for 7,000 new turbines--4,000 onshore and 3,000 offshore.

Brown says the North Sea could turn "into the equivalent for wind power of what the Gulf of Arabia is for the oil industry.  Britain aims to reach an E.U.-mandated target of sourcing 15 percent of energy from renewables by 2020, which will require an investment of nearly $200 billion says Brown. And, he envisions the U.K. cutting greenhouse-gas emissions by nearly 20 percent and oil dependency by 7 percent, and creating some 260,000 green-collar jobs.

This sounds wonderful but I wonder what safeguards will be in place for migrating birds. Does anyone know of a current study on windmill bird fatalities? What do you think the chances of a similar effort happening in the U.S.?

Tom Patrick
WindStar Wildlife Institute

Comments

[JT]

They kill not only birds, including raptors, but bats as well. Bat Conservation International did a story recently on wind power and efforts to make the technology more wildlife safe.

[Dona Tracy]

Wind farms are killing birds and bats in record numbers around the world. A new wind farm, Maple Ridge, in NY did a study in its first year of ooperation... the scientists estimated that 10,000 birds and bats were killed there in one year.

[Bee removal in Los Angeles]

aw, this is so sad. :(

[Jack Lewnes]

J.T. and Donna are correct..massive amounts of birds and bats are killed by the wind turbines. The flashing red lights on top, to warn off low-flying aircraft, appear to actually attract birds. And the windmills are always located in areas that birds have migrated through for millenia. So what do we do?
Can we harness the wind and not kill millions of birds?