A rather curious letter recently appeared on the Tulsa World Publishing page, “Wind Turbines,” by Jim Wiegand, Redding, CA. Weigand has no ties to Tulsa and the letter had an editor’s note: “Wiegand is a nationally recognized wildlife biologist and an expert on the effects of wind turbines on birds.” A search shows that Mr. Weigand has a biology degree from the 1970s and makes a living selling antiques. He has done nothing to qualify him as an expert in wildlife biology, and none of his claims, here or elsewhere, are supported by credible research. His hobby is writing letters to newspapers and posting comments on websites critical of wind energy. The letter began with: “The wind industry is hiding a massive genocide of birds and bats related to turbines. The industry has created fraudulent mortality studies and has received voluntary guidelines to conceal its slaughter.” The letter never mentioned birds again, instead criticizing wind power and conspiracy theories.
Wind turbines sometimes kill birds and bats, but bird genocide? In other of his writings, Mr. Wiegand claims that windmills are responsible for dozens of howler crane deaths, and that they will cause their extinction within five years. So far, there is not a single whooping crane death that can be attributed to windmills. Carla Gilbert, in a post for the article, questioned the danger to similar birds. “When I was traveling in Portugal several years ago, we were able to see many wind turbine parks from the road. We were informed that storks like to build their nests on top of them. When the bus stopped to refuel, I took pictures of the storks sitting on their nests above the turbines and I saw several storks coming and going from their nests. I didn’t see any injured or dead birds. ” And storks are not going extinct as a result of windmills. A falconer, who was initially concerned about windmills, now places his hawk boxes on wind turbines and considers them no greater threat to birds than his panoramic window.
There has been considerable opposition to windmills and renewables in general, so it is difficult to know if all the criticisms are factual. Studies have found around an average of five to eight dead birds per windmill. That is roughly the number of birds that are killed in a shop window each year. When birds killed by cars and hunting are added, it would appear that man’s other activities are a greater threat to bird genocide than wind turbines. For birds, the main threats are windows, cats, climate change, disease, hunters, and pesticides.
There is concern for protected species such as minor prairie chickens and eagles. There are severe penalties for damaging eagles, so to be safe, windmill owners apply for permits to legally kill eagles. That has caused quite a bit of outrage, but recently, the government granted companies a 30-year moratorium on enforcing protection laws while they study the problem. An eagle does not seem likely to crash into a windmill, especially since another criticism has to do with the noise that windmills make. There are still confirmed reports that 85 bald eagles were killed by windmills in the past five years, about 17 per year. Eagles are at the top of the food chain, so any environmental pollutant is likely to harm them, and DDT was the main cause of their population decline. Once DDT was banned and they were protected, their population rebounded to around 140,000 in North America and they were removed from the endangered species list. They are damaged by many pollutants associated with energy production: about 280 died from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It is a pity that one of the magnificent birds dies by accident. If we eliminate any activity that could harm them, then we would have to stop much of our energy production.
The concern about lesser prairie chickens is that they avoid tall structures and windmills can cause them to move out of their normal habitat. Prairie chickens gather to mate and each brings a large communal area called a lek. An enterprising oil company in opposition to wind power took a group of reporters to a lek in the Osage Hills, to show them what could be lost if windmills were built there, as if driving a van full of reporters around his lek was not possible. disturb them. Many of the wildlife and noise issues could be solved by where the windmills are located, and reasonable laws are needed to see that the windmills will disturb animals and people as little as possible.
The investigation finds that the actual evidence of bird kills by windmills is greatly exaggerated. In the Journal of Applied Ecology Volume 49, Issue 2, pages 386-394, April 2012, the authors found that the impact of wind farms on bird populations is minimal with the greatest impact occurring during construction than during construction. subsequent operation. A comprehensive study of bird mortality in Canada found that the majority of human-related bird deaths (about 99%) are caused by domestic and wild cats, collisions with buildings and vehicles, and electricity transmission and distribution lines. . A related peer-reviewed study on bird mortality says its data suggests that <0.2% of the population of any species is currently affected by mortality or displacement from wind turbine development. They concluded that, although the number of windmills is projected to increase tenfold in the next two decades, "population-level impacts on bird populations are unlikely, provided highly sensitive habitats or rare, as well as areas of concentration of species at risk, are avoided. "
Mr. Wiegand’s letter is mostly fiction. Some people cannot see the value or beauty of windmills and look for any excuse to criticize them.
