Wind farms are hardly the bird slayers they're made out to be—here's why

[Binary_Bark]

People who oppose wind farms often claim wind turbine blades kill large numbers of birds, often referring to them as "bird choppers". And claims of dangers to iconic or rare birds, especially raptors, have attracted a lot of attention.
Wind turbine blades do indeed kill birds and bats, but their contribution to total bird deaths is extremely low, as these three studies show.
A 2009 study using US and European data on bird deaths estimated the number of birds killed per unit of power generated by wind, fossil fuel and nuclear power systems.
It concluded, "Wind farms and nuclear power stations are responsible each for between 0.3 and 0.4 fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while fossil-fuelled power stations are responsible for about 5.2 fatalities per GWh."
That's nearly 15 times more. From this, the author estimated that wind farms killed approximately seven thousand birds in the United States in 2006 but nuclear plants killed about 327,000 and fossil-fuelled power plants 14.5 million.
In other words, for every one bird killed by a wind turbine, nuclear and fossil fuel powered plants killed 2,118 birds.
A Spanish study involved daily inspections of the ground around 20 wind farms with 252 turbines from 2005 to 2008. It found 596 dead birds.
The turbines in the sample had been working for different times during the study period (between 11 and 34 months), with the average annual number of fatalities per turbine being just 1.33. The authors noted this was one of the highest collision rates reported in the world research literature.
Raptor collisions accounted for 36% of total bird deaths (214 deaths), most of which were griffon vultures (138 birds, 23% of total mortality). The study area was in the southernmost area of Spain near Gibraltar, which is a migratory zone for birds from Morocco into Spain.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-farms-bird-slayers-theyre-behere.html#jCp

 

[upup]

That's nearly 15 times more. From this, the author estimated that wind farms killed approximately seven thousand birds in the United States in 2006 but nuclear plants killed about 327,000 and fossil-fuelled power plants 14.5 million.

Please explain how a power station kills birds.

 

[supersunbird]

That's nearly 15 times more. From this, the author estimated that wind farms killed approximately seven thousand birds in the United States in 2006 but nuclear plants killed about 327,000 and fossil-fuelled power plants 14.5 million.

Please explain how a power station kills birds.

Polution/Besoedeling

 

[AlphaJohn]

You know what the bigest killer of birds are... And I am saying it as an owner.

Cats

Nothing and no one can even com close to this little sweet monsters. Wind farms have to really work at it to come close to these little rascals.

Humans think of cats as fuzzy and cute. Birds and small mammals have a vastly different perception.

Domestic cats kill between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and between 6.9 and 20.7 billion mammals (mostly mice, shrews, rabbits, squirrels, and voles) each year, according to a study published last year in Nature Communications.

The study indicated that both stray and owned cats are responsible for a far greater number of bird and mammal deaths in the contiguous United States than previously estimated, outpacing other threats such as collisions with windows, buildings, communication towers, cars, and poisoning, the report notes.

Free-ranging cats are "likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic (man-made) mortality for US birds and mammals," according to the report.

 

[Nanfeishen]

That's nearly 15 times more. From this, the author estimated that wind farms killed approximately seven thousand birds in the United States in 2006 but nuclear plants killed about 327,000 and fossil-fuelled power plants 14.5 million.

And buildings kill even more

In all, it’s estimated that the Toronto skyline accounts for about 1 million bird deaths a year — and even that is just a drop in the bucket. It’s hard to put a precise number on collision-related mortalities, but researcher Scott Loss of the Smithsonian Institute is preparing to publish new research that, based on a sophisticated analysis of 23 previous studies, estimates that between 400 million and 1 billion birds die from window impacts each year in the U.S. alone.

http://www.theecologist.org/News/ne...with_buildings_severely_dent_populations.html

And Cars

Hunters bagged a mere 19 million U.S. ducks and geese in 2012
....................
To compile a nationwide estimate of avian road kill, the study's authors extrapolated from 13 small-scale surveys of birds that died after being hit by vehicles. The results show that 89 million to 340 million birds suffer fatal injuries from vehicle encounters annually, a range that accounts for dead birds taken by scavengers, carcasses missed by researchers and other uncertainties, the researchers report in an upcoming issue of The Journal of Wildlife Management. Previous research had pegged bird deaths from vehicles at 60 million to 80 million.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/05/29/bird-deaths-car-crashes/9623931/

Wind Farms are clearly not an issue in the big picture of bird deaths they are made out to be.

 

[AlphaJohn]

And buildings kill even more

And Cars

Wind Farms are clearly not an issue in the big picture of bird deaths they are made out to be.

Shame.... cats still win.

So if you wanna save the birds. Fix your cat and if possible prevent them from roaming. They live longer that way anyway.

 

[SauRoNZA]

And how many of those birds had enough and killed themselves?

You can't blame the knife for suicidal humans...same should apply to birds.

/joking.

 

[BigAl-sa]

Polution/Besoedeling

And I would really like to know how this is measured...

Especially with nuclear.

 

[Nanfeishen]

And how many of those birds had enough and killed themselves?

You can't blame the knife for suicidal humans...same should apply to birds.

/joking.

Good one - :crylaugh:

 

[OrbitalDawn]

Polution/Besoedeling

People really underestimate the harm from pollution. Just storing coal near power plants creates a 40km zone of increased infant mortality.

Handle with Care: The Local Air Pollution Costs of Coal Storage.