Wind Farms & Birds: Interview with Bill Evans, Avian Tower Kill Authority

My post on Wind Farms and Avian Mortality continues to generate a good deal of interest. I’m impressed with the amount of skepticism and questioning it generated…This is good; questioning is the very reason I wrote the post. 

Bird watchers and bat lovers need to know more about how ‘tall man-made structures’ affect flying animals. So I contacted Bill Evans, a leading authority on avian tower kills, and asked him to put the issue in perspective and comment on the current proliferation of wind farms. 

Thanks for joining me, Bill. Can you put the issue of bird mortality from cell phone towers in perspective for us?

Generally, cell phone towers are not a major concern for bird impact if U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) tower guidelines are followed. Cell towers that are less than 200-ft high and unguyed are the safest and thousands of such towers have been built.

My concern is that in the Great Plains region many taller, guyed cell towers are being built (e.g., 400-ft agl) that have unsafe lighting for birds.

For example, if you look at Texas on Towerkill.com you will see that in the period 1998-2004, installation of towers ranging from 300-500 ft in height increased by more than 1,000. There are few studies on the impact to birds of such towers but the study cited below suggests it may be at least 50 annually:

Gehring, J. Kerlinger, P. and A.M. Manville II. 2009. Communication towers, lights, and birds: successful methods of reducing the frequency of avian collisions. Ecological Applications, 19(2):505-514.

What do you think is the next step to curtail these impacts – and who or what is involved in that?

There has been a decade-long effort by many people and organizations to get the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to change the lighting regulations on tall towers to one that is less disorienting and less hazardous for night migrating birds (i.e., just using flashing lights). A historical account of this effort is included on Towerkill.com.

Currently, a lawsuit orchestrated by the American Bird Conservancy and other conservation groups against the FCC is awaiting FCC response. The FCC is waiting for a “conspicuity” test by the FAA of the proposed safer lighting system on towers (i.e., just using flashing lights). In other words, the FAA has to make sure that a change in the aviation obstruction lighting on communications towers won’t impair the function of the warning lighting for pilots.

How do you feel about the current proliferation of wind farms to produce clean energy? 

I’d feel a lot better if the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) was enforced for every Federal dollar involved. Wind energy so far is operating at a NEPA net negative –for example, there are 13,000 commercial-scale wind turbines in the Midwestern US. Most, if not all, of the associated wind projects are benefiting from Federal subsidies but they haven’t had any substantive flying animal (bird & bat) fatality assessment yet multiple threatened and endangered species are involved.

I’m also not convinced that industrial wind farms are going to be an effective solution for significantly curbing CO2 emissions. I’m not against wind but I’m personally in the camp that modern nations need to come together in agreement on a temporary proliferation period of nuclear energy to make certain that we level off CO2 by 2050. If something else should arise (e.g. cheap solar) that can address the CO2 problem in the meantime, then that would mean we could reduce dependence on nuclear all the faster.

Of course we all have our agendas and I’m coming from the perspective of a kid who fell in love with neotropical migrant birds at age 13 and has been working passionately toward preserving the integrity of their vital migration patterns since my mid-20s (~25 years).  To me, nocturnal bird migration is the Sequoia of animal behavior and there is massive ignorance in most of ~6.8 billion people about this contemporaneous and awesome phenomenon around us.

Yes, we must address the earth’s CO2 levels in order to preserve our remnant pieces of natural history, [so clean energy is important; but] minimizing impact to night migrating birds from tall, man-made structures is equally important from the perspective of maintaining the integrity of ancient long-distance bird migration patterns. There is no valid reason why these two efforts shouldn’t go hand in hand.

Conservation and appreciation for wildlife is part of the American heritage. Money directed to understand wind energy’s wildlife impacts provides jobs. We are missing a chance to broaden the biodiversity of our economy and build ecological interconnections around the world.

How are the potential threats of wind farms to birds being managed – or not?

In some regions of the continent there have been good studies and a precautionary approach (e.g., New York), but unfortunately the whole Great Plains region is getting built up largely without environmental impact studies.

There are also projects being built in very inappropriate locations from a wildlife impact standpoint. The Canadian Wolfe Island wind project near Kingston was built, amidst protest, in an internationally designated Important Bird Area.

The huge wind project in Oaxaca, MX is a hideous siting from the bird impact perspective. It is located in the middle of a continental bottleneck for bird migration between North and South America. This region has perhaps the densest bird migration per kilometer on Earth!

Are you aware of the Peñascal Project south of Corpus Christi?

From the avian impact standpoint, I think the Peñascal project south of Corpus is the worst sited wind project in the US. The environmental studies I’ve seen for the project are grossly incomplete and lack transparency. I have seen no basis for public confidence that the project will not have major bird impact and the precedent of the Peñascal wind project should be of great concern to bird lovers.

I studied bird migration in south coastal Texas for 10 years. This region has the highest density of bird migration and greatest migratory species diversity of any region in North America, so the precautionary approach certainly was not applied with the Peñascal Project (blogger note: please see my post for more information on the pre-construction studies done for this project). 

While one wind project such as Peñascal will not likely have continentally significant flying animal impacts, its precedent sets the stage for the whole Texas coastal region to be built up with wind projects–which would significantly affect continental birdlife.

Any opinions on the MERLIN technology that’s being used at Peñascal to shut off blades when an oncoming flock is detected?

I think the MERLIN radar system is an outstanding technical achievement, and I know several of its developers, but from what I can see its utilization at the Peñascal wind project is getting more service as a public relations tool than mitigating bird fatalities. This methodology should have been scientifically validated and peer-reviewed before it received such wide press, and I fear it is misleading the public.

Bird migration happens on the south coast of Texas 24/7 at least 10 months a year. The volume of migration is too great to simply shut down the wind turbines every time birds might pass by.

I also don’t see how shutting down turbines for a few big migration days a year is going to make a difference in fatalities — shutting them down more than that starts to impact the profitability of the wind project.

I will follow the development of this mitigation approach but I am not optimistic for its utility. Given that we have not seen transparency and critical review in the preconstruction studies, why shouldn’t one think that this application of the MERLIN technology is a scam to deflect concern about the project’s bird impact?

It simply does not make sense economically or ecologically to build a wind project at a location with such high bird migration rates that the wind project would need to be shut down at times to mitigate bird kill.

(Blogger note: reactions to my post on this subject invited loads of skepticism re: the  reported safety of this wind farm to migrating birds. Pre-construction studies revealed surprisingly low threat, said the avian biologist in charge. But continued skepticism is fed by the lack of transparency in the data which are held proprietary by the energy company. Ornithologists clearly want the chance to verify these data.)

What can bird enthusiasts do right now to make a difference on the issues of wind farms or cell phone towers?

For communications towers, I think it is critical for everyone to support and follow the American Bird Conservancy’s lawsuit against the FCC regarding communications towers. Donations to ABC earmarked for the “towerkill” issue would send an important message of support to ABC. We also need to support USFWS to continue its leadership in addressing this problem.

Regarding wind power, we need NEPA enforced. That involves a groundswell of public support for our bird clubs and conservation organizations to pressure our government –  and demanding that our tax dollars used to promote “clean and renewable” wind energy be wed to the NEPA process.

We are headed toward a huge buildout of wind energy facilities – it would be a great asset to future generations for us to make the effort now to fully understand and minimize wind energy’s impact to migrant birds and other creatures.

Thank you, Bill. What links should we follow to stay abreast of this issue?

USFWS communications tower issue page

History of our effort to reduce kills at communications towers

American Bird Conservancy towerkill lawsuit

Wind energy in the US

General information on avian towerkill

 

Bill Evans is the President of OldBird.org, a nonprofit dedicated to facilitating acoustic monitoring of flight calls during nocturnal migration, and developer of TowerKill.com, which houses a wealth of information on the issue of avian fatalities at communications towers. 

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Tagged as: cell towers, Conservation, migration, wind energy