We have heard about most common bird fatalities due to collisions with wind turbines. Over the last couple of years, there have been a number of reports detailing the impact wind farms have on bird populations. One report published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin said that 573,000 birds and 888,000 bats were being killed each year by wind turbines.
Recently, USFWS published a study of three solar farms in Southern California and found that some 231 birds from 71 species were killed over the two-year period. The cause of death ranged from exposure to high temperatures of up to 800 degrees (by flying through flux fields comprised of the rays of the sun directed off the solar panels), to blunt force trauma, to predators (due to birds losing the ability to fly because their wings have been singed by passing through a flux field).
Some of these numbers are alarming and asking for more studies. I was wondering if there are more studies reported which I have missed.
There are two points I would like to make:
1) The numbers quoted from the two sources mentioned in the Question seem to be at odds. They need to be reconciled or need to be compared with other sources.
2) There is a tradeoff to be made between the survivability of specific bird species and the survivability of human beings without energy sources that do not cause global warming.
You must specify that the solar farm are concentration thermoelectric ones using towers.
Perhaps a lot more killings of animals and humans are due the climate change produced by wind turbines
"One report published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin said"
Is the respective report available as pdf?
@ Zsolt, Wildlife Society Bulletin is journal published by Wiley and there are 25 articles related to bird collisions with wind turbines. The article I have cited is one published in Smallwood, K.S. (2013), Comparing bird and bat fatality-rate estimates among North American wind-energy projects, Wildlife Society Bulletin, Volume 37, Issue 1, pages 19–33.
@Javier, USSF report is about utility-scale solar energy which is not necessarily concentration thermoelectric one and risks have been reported for all three solar plant types (photovoltaic, trough and solar power towers).
@Antonio, "the numbers quoted from the two sources mentioned in the Question seem to be at odds" why? Of Course we need more studies and that is the purpose of my question to see if we have more such studies.
And apart from tradeoff, we need to study different designs of utility-scale solar energy farm to minimise these impacts.
Dear Vikas, a colleague did a study on the impact of renewable energy structures on tourism, as part of the ecosystem. The initial report was done in another language but you will find a google translation here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262948582_The_impact_of_renewable_energy_structures_on_tourism
Technical Report The impact of renewable energy structures on tourism
There are positive effects of windfarms in the sea: In Denmark the coastal sea had been completely fished out. The presence of windfarms (towers) prevents fishing (nets) of schools of small fish. Now they are again present in larger numbers providing food for birds and larger predators.
It makes no sense to look at bird deaths of renewable power plants in isolation. You have to make a comparison with other power sources. Sovocaal (2012) finds that nuclear power plants cause 2.2, and fossil power plants 9.4 times as much bird deaths per GWh as wind power. So wind energy actually reduces bird deaths.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2198024
Regarding your question for more literature. The impact of wind turbines has been studied extensively. Just type "wind turbine bird" , "bat wind turbine" into google scholar and you will find more than enough literature.
The impact of solar energy on birds is less well studied. An older study on the impact of the first U.S. concentrating solar power plants can be found here:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4513113?seq=3
The energy produced by clean sources (sun, wind) is an important asset in the idea of changing human behavior in energy consumption.
Build a dam on a river affects the ecosystem, but energy generated by water power is cleaner and its impact on the energy produced by a nuclear power plant environment.
In human research to protect the environment, must be made compomis despite the negative side with the death of birds in the wind farm, I find that the effect is minor than an nuclear accident (Japan), or Oil production platform in the sea (USA).
Hi.
One of the possible negative effects of large scale projects of wind farms in Tenerife, Canary Islands, is collision of some endangered birds with the turbines, e.g. the Stone Curlew (Burhinus oedicnemus), represented by an endemic subspecies of some islands of our archipelago and classified as "Vulnerable" in the Spanish catalogue of endangered plants and animals. The problem is that usually many wind farms are situated in its habitat, and local population of this bird is low.
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