Impacts of Wind Energy Development on Bats: A Global Perspective

Arnett, Edward B.; Baerwald, Erin F.; Mathews, Fiona; Rodrigues, Luísa; Rodríguez-Durán, Armando; Rydell, Jens; Villegas-Patraca, Rafael; Voigt, Christian C.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-25220-9_11

Cited by 99 publications

(132 citation statements)

References 62 publications

(103 reference statements)

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“…However, precision of estimated effect sizes increased when informative priors were used, strengthening the influence of forest cover on hoary bat occurrence. Figure 5 and Hayes, Cryan, & Wunder, 2015) and is likely to have caused many hoary bat fatalities over a longer period of time (e.g., since ~2000; Arnett et al, 2016;O'Shea et al, 2016). reported in the region in 2016 but has not yet resulted in widespread regional impact to the little brown bat as has occurred in eastern North America (Frick et al, 2015).…”

Section: Re Sultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With new data, this prior understanding can in turn be updated and represented as new, updated posteriors, with an expectation that clarity about population distribution and abundance, in the form of precision, will increase over time (Morris, Vesk, McCarthy, Bunyavejchewin, & Baker, 2015). There is urgency to this opportunity to scaffold upon prior information because bat populations in the region are facing potentially catastrophic declines (e.g., O'Shea, Cryan, Hayman, Plowright, & Streicker, 2016) from the recent arrival of the bat disease white-nose syndrome (Lorch et al, 2016) and the rapidly expanding footprint of the wind power industry (Arnett et al, 2016). This scenario is exemplified by a bat monitoring program in an ~440,000 km 2 region of the Pacific Northwestern United States ( Figure 1) in which the occupancy modeling results from 8 years of monitoring, which ended in 2010 (Rodhouse et al, 2012, require updating with new survey data gathered during 2016-2018 for contribution to the North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat; Loeb et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evidence of region‐wide bat population decline from long‐term monitoring and Bayesian occupancy models with empirically informed priors

Rodhouse

Rodriguez

Banner

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Strategic conservation efforts for cryptic species, especially bats, are hindered by limited understanding of distribution and population trends. Integrating long‐term encounter surveys with multi‐season occupancy models provides a solution whereby inferences about changing occupancy probabilities and latent changes in abundance can be supported. When harnessed to a Bayesian inferential paradigm, this modeling framework offers flexibility for conservation programs that need to update prior model‐based understanding about at‐risk species with new data. This scenario is exemplified by a bat monitoring program in the Pacific Northwestern United States in which results from 8 years of surveys from 2003 to 2010 require updating with new data from 2016 to 2018. The new data were collected after the arrival of bat white‐nose syndrome and expansion of wind power generation, stressors expected to cause population declines in at least two vulnerable species, little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) and the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus). We used multi‐season occupancy models with empirically informed prior distributions drawn from previous occupancy results (2003–2010) to assess evidence of contemporary decline in these two species. Empirically informed priors provided the bridge across the two monitoring periods and increased precision of parameter posterior distributions, but did not alter inferences relative to use of vague priors. We found evidence of region‐wide summertime decline for the hoary bat (trueλ^ = 0.86 ± 0.10) since 2010, but no evidence of decline for the little brown bat (trueλ^ = 1.1 ± 0.10). White‐nose syndrome was documented in the region in 2016 and may not yet have caused regional impact to the little brown bat. However, our discovery of hoary bat decline is consistent with the hypothesis that the longer duration and greater geographic extent of the wind energy stressor (collision and barotrauma) have impacted the species. These hypotheses can be evaluated and updated over time within our framework of pre–post impact monitoring and modeling. Our approach provides the foundation for a strategic evidence‐based conservation system and contributes to a growing preponderance of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry that bat species are declining.

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Section: Re Sultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence of region‐wide bat population decline from long‐term monitoring and Bayesian occupancy models with empirically informed priors

Rodhouse

Rodriguez

Banner

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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“…; Arnett et al . ; Figure ). Moving vehicles kill billions of flying insects (Baxter‐Gilbert et al .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…), wind turbines kill millions of bats (Arnett et al . ), and aircrafts kill thousands of birds (Dolbeer et al . ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aeroconservation for the Fragmented Skies

Davy

Ford

Fraser

2017

CONSERVATION LETTERS

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From birds to bacteria, airborne organisms face substantial anthropogenic impacts. The airspace provides essential habitat for thousands of species, some of which spend most of their lives airborne. Despite recent calls to protect the airspace, it continues to be treated as secondary to terrestrial and aquatic habitats in policy and research. Aeroconservation integrates recent advances in aeroecology and habitat connectivity, and recognizes aerial habitats and threats as analogous to their terrestrial and aquatic counterparts. Aerial habitats are poorly represented in the ecological literature and are largely absent from environmental policy, hindering protection of aerial biodiversity. Here, we provide a framework for defining aerial habitats to advance the study of aeroconservation and the protection of the airspace in environmental policy. We illustrate how current habitat definitions explicitly disadvantage aerial species relative to non-aerial species, and review key areas of conflict between aeroconservation and human use of the airspace. Finally, we identify opportunities for research to fill critical knowledge gaps for aeroconservation. For example, aerial habitat fragmentation may impact biodiversity and ecosystem function similarly to terrestrial habitat fragmentation, and we illustrate how this can be investigated by extending existing methods and paradigms from terrestrial conservation biology up into the airspace.

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“…Most of the studies addressing the impact of wind farms on bats by collision have been carried out in Europe and USA at the population level (Arnett et al, 2007; Kunz et al, 2007; Rydell et al, 2010; Cryan et al, 2014; Arnett et al, 2016). Only recently have Ferri, Battisti & Soccini (2016) analyzed this impact at the community level for a Mediterranean mountain landscape in central Italy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of a wind farm installation on the understory bat community of a highly biodiverse tropical region in Mexico

Briones‐Salas

Lavariega

Moreno

2017

PeerJ

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Wind energy has rapidly become an important alternative among renewable energies, and it is generally considered clean. However, little is known about its impact at the level of ecological communities, especially in biodiversity hotspots. The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is a highly biodiverse region in Mesoamerica, and has the highest potential for generating wind energy in Mexico. To assess the effects of installing a wind farm on the understory bat community in a landscape of fragmented habitat, we assessed its diversity and composition over four stages of installation (site preparation, construction, and two stages of operation). We captured 919 bats belonging to 22 species. Species richness, functional diversity and phylogenetic diversity decreased during construction and the first stage of operation. However, these components of biodiversity increased during the second stage of operation, and species composition began to resemble that of the site preparation stage. No species considered as sensitive to disturbance was recorded at any stage. This is the first study to reveal the diversity of a Neotropical bat community after wind turbines begin to operate.

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Impacts of Wind Energy Development on Bats: A Global Perspective

Cited by 99 publications

References 62 publications

Evidence of region‐wide bat population decline from long‐term monitoring and Bayesian occupancy models with empirically informed priors

Evidence of region‐wide bat population decline from long‐term monitoring and Bayesian occupancy models with empirically informed priors

Aeroconservation for the Fragmented Skies

Effects of a wind farm installation on the understory bat community of a highly biodiverse tropical region in Mexico

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