Amherst Island Wind Info
Birds and Bats
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Amherst Island Wind Info |
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Of all the issues surrounding wind power, birds and bats are the most depressing. If we humans want to destroy ourselves, that's one thing. But to destroy so many other of Nature's creatures is a different matter. My research has led me to two broad conclusions. First, the siting of wind farms is critical if we are to avoid seriously impacting the bird and bat populations. Second, there are many critically important things about bird and bat behaviour that we just don't know very much about. Worse, it seems that the industry and the government aren't interested in learning, 1.6mb.
Birds
There are two major effects of wind turbines on birds. The first, and most widely reported, concerns collisions. The second, about which we know precious little, concerns destruction or degrading of habitat.
There's been a fair amount of press about birds suffering collisions with wind turbines. Most of this was with early designs and with locations that were bird-rich to begin with. Wind turbine proponents would correctly counter that other man-made dangers kill more birds than turbines ever have, and they are certainly correct. To me that misses the more important point, which is that if improperly sited, turbines can disproportionally endanger certain species of birds, some of which are already under significant pressure. In my research one main conclusion stood out: turbines must be appropriately sited to avoid causing unreasonable damage to the general habitat, especially to certain bird and bat populations.
Raptors are often cited as being particularly susceptible to collisions. For years the industry has been claiming the newer turbines don't kill as many raptors as they used to. Sadly, this claim is probably not correct. There are various anecdotal reports of how wildlife in general has disappeared when a wind farm has gone in. Update - some actual studies are coming in to confirm the anecdotes. Not good news.
At least there is a test bed for some of my fears - Wolfe Island. There is a major turbine project under construction there (late 2008) and it is close enough to Amherst that I can follow it fairly closely. It has become too big a topic to keep here, so it now has its own Wolfe Island Bird Page. If you want to get a sense of how the reality compares with the rosy words developers like CHD say, please take the time to read through the information there. I fear that on Wolfe Island we are witnessing the knowing destruction of a unique and valuable habitat, and the governments responsible are doing less than nothing to protect it. I'd love to be proven wrong, but at least there should be enough studies to publicly document the destruction. Of course it will then be too late.
In the dismal swamp of governmental indifference to the fate of birds and bats every now and then some agency rears up and actually insists upon a serious study before a project is built. For a project in upstate NY in the middle of a major migration route, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service provided an example (big, 13mb) of what standards an adequate study should meet. Compare this with the paltry oversight of Ontario's MOE for Wolfe Island. And this is not a U.S. / Canada thing - governments on both sides of the border have shirked their responsibilities to the environment.
Returning to Amherst Island, it has a well-deserved reputation of being one of the best birding spots in North America, particularly the owl woods. A quick google on "Amherst Island birding" would confirm this. Canada Environment draws up maps of "Important Bird Areas" and Amherst is right in the middle of a series of them.
How important are Amherst and Wolfe Islands to winter raptors? From the Wolfe Island ER: Environment Canada compiled the results of recent winter bird surveys from 17 sites in southern Ontario, and concluded that just a few sites across southern Ontario provide the necessary conditions to support high numbers of wintering raptors (Environment Canada, letter, September 21, 2007). Two sites, Amherst Island (3.14 raptors/kilometer) and Fisherville (2.14 raptors/kilometer) had higher raptor densities than Wolfe Island (1.4 raptors/kilometer, with 1.92 raptors/kilometer west of Highway 95), which had similar densities to a site north of Glencoe. The remainder of the sites supported raptor densities that were an order of magnitude less than these four sites (Environment Canada, letter, September 21, 2007). In other words Amherst and Wolfe together make up a substantial portion of the entire Province's winter raptor habitat.
Especially with regard to Amherst Island, we don't know at this point is exactly how the presence of a wind farm will affect all the raptors, and owls in particular. Will they adapt, or will they go somewhere else to a presumably less-desirable habitat? Many owls use sound to hunt, and that is especially true of owls that hunt at night. To me the main danger is that the noise of the turbines will make hunting by ear much more difficult, and the owls will consequently move elsewhere, to presumably less desirable habitat. Studies show that owls can hear sounds about 10db softer than what we can, and that their ability to differentiate certain sounds (like a vole under the snow) from ambient noise are about the same as ours. What we don't know is how loud the ambience sound can get before the owls lose this ability. In nature, increasing wind causing increasing ambient noise would at some point presumably mask the sounds of voles etc. I've not seen any studies of when this level might be reached. A turbine producing 40db would create the same masking as an 18mph wind, which at Amherst Island blows that hard less than 1% of the time, especially near the woods. Typically a turbine would produce 40db out to a distance of 1500 meters for perhaps 80% of the time.
This is highly speculative, but I'd bet owls cannot hunt by ear in 18 mph winds, and I bet they can't hunt within 1500 meters of a turbine either. If I am correct, any turbines east of about the Caugheys' will greatly lessen or maybe even eliminate the owl woods, at least for those owls who primarily hunt at night and rely on being able to hear their prey.
Bats
The effect of turbines upon bats has received a lot of notice. It seems that certain badly-placed turbines kill large numbers of bats in a particularly gruesome manner, by so quickly sucking the air out of their lungs as they fly by that the lungs fill up with blood. There's some research (3.0mb) that by raising the cut-in speed a little We demonstrated nightly reductions in bat fatality ranging from 53–87% with marginal annual power loss. It will be interesting to see how the wind companies respond to this research, and to the problem of bat fatalities in general.
Other Research
For some extra reading, here are copies of three reports concerning birds and bats given to governmental bodies: the Daulton testimony, the Arnett testimony and the Fry testimony. These are pretty balanced and all emphasize the importance of placing the turbines in the right places.
Below are links to additional papers that concern birds and turbines. Some of these have been used by pro-wind people and some by anti-wind people. If anyone finds anything else of interest, please let me know about it.