Massive Bird Kill at West Virginia Wind Farm
Posted: 29 Oct 2011 08:22 AM PDT
With the deaths of nearly 500 birds at the Laurel Mountain wind facility earlier this month, three of the four wind farms operating in West Virginia have now experienced large bird fatality events, according to American Bird Conservancy (ABC), the nation’s leading bird conservation organization.
Read full article on FocusingOnWildlife.com
According to the article above, 75% of operational wind farms in West Virginia have been associated with mass killings of birds.
While Canadian studies have established that turbine-related bat deaths are caused by sudden lethal changes in air pressure, people are still wondering why it is that birds collide with wind turbines.
Logic suggests that it is a question of visibility. Night strikes aside, it’s possible that the victims are confused by the apparently slower rotation of the blades nearer the hub, and extrapolating from what they can see, they miscalculate their chances of flying safely through the space of rotor arc closer to the faster moving tips which may appear speed-blurred to a state of reduced visibility for them.
Certainly nothing in nature moves the way turbine blades do, with the exception perhaps of a certain type of spider in Namibia that cart-wheels down sand dunes as a method of rapid transit! You may have seen footage of this creature on BBC’s excellent series Life On Earth.
Conventional evolutionary pressures will not have prepared birds for the range of motion or variation in perceived speed of turbine rotor blades.
Biomass heating, air, ground and water source heat pumps, anaerobic digestion and solar thermal and solar voltaic panels are kinder to the wildlife and to the skyline.
Tags: air, anaerobic digestion, Biomass heating, bird strikes, ground and water source heat pumps, solar thermal, solar voltaic panels, Wind farms and bird kills
