Information needs to support environmental impact assessment of the effects of European marine offshore wind farms on birds

Abstract

European legislation requires Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEAs) of national offshore wind farm (OWF) programmes and Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) for individual projects likely to affect birds. SEAs require extensive mapping of waterbird densities to define breeding and feeding areas of importance and sensitivity. Use of extensive large scale weather, military, and air traffic control surveillance radar is recommended, to define areas, routes and behaviour of migrating birds, and to determine avian migration corridors in three dimensions. EIAs for individual OWFs should define the key avian species present; as well as assess the hazards presented to birds in terms of avoidance behaviour, habitat change and collision risk. Such measures, however, are less helpful in assessing cumulative impacts. Using aerial survey, physical habitat loss, modification, or gain and effective habitat loss through avoidance behaviour can be measured using bird densities as a proxy measure of habitat availability. The energetic consequences of avoidance responses and habitat change should be modelled to estimate fitness costs and predict impacts at the population level. Our present ability to model collision risk remains poor due to lack of data on species‐specific avoidance responses. There is therefore an urgent need to gather data on avoidance responses; energetic consequences of habitat modification and avoidance flights and demographic sensitivity of key species, most affected by OWFs. This analysis stresses the importance of common data collection protocols, sharing of information and experience, and accessibility of results at the international level to better improve our predictive abilities.

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“…As there are limited data available on the collision mortality of seabirds with offshore wind farm structures [46], caution should be taken in drawing general conclusions. The further development of radar and thermal imaging hardware and associated software is therefore required to gather data on actual collision rates for a range of species.…”

“…Such avoidance behaviour may have several consequences, one of which is an increase in the energy demands of an individual bird, because of increased distances flown in order to avoid a wind farm. The impact of extended or modified flight lengths due to the presence of a wind farm site may be small in energetic terms for migratory birds [48] but could have greater consequences for wintering birds commuting daily between feeding and roosting areas e.g., common eider and common scoter Melanitta nigra [46,48]. A study at the Nysted offshore wind farm reported an added distance of c.500 m to migratory common eider as the consequence of the wind farm's presence in their migratory flight path.…”

“…Such behaviour reduces collision risk but means that offshore wind farms can both produce areas of effective 'habitat loss' for some seabird species, and/or represent a barrier to movement either to local feeding and roosting flights, or to longer migratory flights [1,46,48]. Whether or not marine birds will be affected at an offshore wind farm site will be dependent on several factors, including the species of marine birds using the area (this related to individual species vulnerability to disturbance), the functional use of the surrounding waters and airspace, and wind farm design.…”