We introduce case studies of effects of wind farms on raptors from Spain, Norway, Canada, United States, and southern Africa, and follow with an evaluation of the challenges of measuring fatalities of raptors at wind farms and how they may be overcome. We begin with an overview of raptor species affected by wind farms worldwide. This review of case studies illustrates the global state of knowledge of the effects of wind-energy development on raptors and is derived from nine presentations at a symposium at the 2015 Raptor Research Foundation annual conference. The negative effects of wind turbines on other raptor species are less well understood, and corresponding mitigation responses less well developed. In the United States, eagle mortality and mitigation strategies have received most attention because of eagles' legal status under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Raptors are among the species known to be most strongly affected by wind turbines, mostly through direct mortality and secondarily through habitat alteration and loss. 2009).Īttempts to measure and mitigate the effects of wind turbines on wildlife have been an integral part of wind-energy development. The potential for wind-power generation globally is vast, potentially supplying >40 times the current worldwide consumption of electricity, and >5 times the total global use of energy in all forms ( Lu et al. 2016), followed by the United States (74 GW), Germany (45 GW), India (25 GW), Spain (23 GW), Italy (9 GW), and Japan (3 GW REN21 2016). China currently leads the world with 145 GW of installed capacity, about a third of the world's total wind power ( Davidson et al. Globally, a record 63 gigawatts (GW) of wind-energy production was added in 2015 for a total of about 433 GW ( REN21 2016). Wind-energy production worldwide has increased rapidly in the last decade wind power was the leading source of new power generating capacity in Europe and the United States in 2015 and the second largest in China.
Global standards for wind farm placement, monitoring, and effects mitigation would be a valuable contribution to raptor conservation worldwide. Measurement of raptor mortality at wind farms is the subject of intense effort and study, especially where mitigation is required by law, with novel statistical approaches recently made available to improve the notoriously difficult-to-estimate mortality rates of rare and hard-to-detect species. At established wind farms that already conflict with raptors, reduction of fatalities may be feasible by curtailment of turbines as raptors approach, and offset through mitigation of other human causes of mortality such as electrocution and poisoning, provided the relative effects can be quantified. The impact on raptors has much to do with their behavior, so careful siting of wind-energy developments to avoid areas suited to raptor breeding, foraging, or migration would reduce these effects. Collision mortality, displacement, and habitat loss have the potential to cause population-level effects, especially for species that are rare or endangered. We review case studies from around the world of the effects on raptors of wind-energy development.
The global potential for wind power generation is vast, and the number of installations is increasing rapidly.
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