Prioritizing Avian Species for Their Risk of Population-Level Consequences from Wind Energy Development

Abstract

Recent growth in the wind energy industry has increased concerns about its impacts on wildlife populations. Direct impacts of wind energy include bird and bat collisions with turbines whereas indirect impacts include changes in wildlife habitat and behavior. Although many species may withstand these effects, species that are long-lived with low rates of reproduction, have specialized habitat preferences, or are attracted to turbines may be more prone to declines in population abundance. We developed a prioritization system to identify the avian species most likely to experience population declines from wind facilities based on their current conservation status and their expected risk from turbines. We developed 3 metrics of turbine risk that incorporate data on collision fatalities at wind facilities, population size, life history, species’ distributions relative to turbine locations, number of suitable habitat types, and species’ conservation status. We calculated at least 1 measure of turbine risk for 428 avian species that breed in the United States. We then simulated 100,000 random sets of cutoff criteria (i.e., the metric values used to assign species to different priority categories) for each turbine risk metric and for conservation status. For each set of criteria, we assigned each species a priority score and calculated the average priority score across all sets of criteria. Our prioritization system highlights both species that could potentially experience population decline caused by wind energy and species at low risk of population decline. For instance, several birds of prey, such as the long-eared owl, ferruginous hawk, Swainson’s hawk, and golden eagle, were at relatively high risk of population decline across a wide variety of cutoff values, whereas many passerines were at relatively low risk of decline. This prioritization system is a first step that will help researchers, conservationists, managers, and industry target future study and management activity.

Agricultural destruction of Northern Pintail nests on cropland in prairie Canada

“…There are very few instances where the current impacts of direct incidental human-related mortality are thought to result in population-level declines Zink 2011, Calvert et al 2013). Although Longcore and Smith (2013) cautioned against focusing only on species where such mortality might cause population declines, it is reasonable to do so because priority-setting exercises based on conservation concern are the norm in conservation biology (Mehlman et al 2004, Beston et al 2016. In this paper, we quantify the nonintentional anthropogenic mortality for one of the few avian species in North America where it has been proposed that direct human-caused mortality may be responsible for the population decline.…”

A long‐term assessment of raptor displacement at a wind farm

“…Raptors (birds of prey) appear particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of wind development, making them a priority for wind farm risk assessments (Beston et al . ; Erickson et al . ).…”

Lo que el viento se llevó: ¿conocemos el impacto que producir energía eólica causa sobre los vertebrados voladores de Costa Rica?

“…Dichos datos son requeridos para elaborar análisis comprensivos sobre la afectación de un área específica o en el nivel del país (p. ej. Powlesland, 2009;Zimmerling et al, 2013;Beston et al, 2016;Johnson et al, 2016;RELCOM, 2016). Estar actualizados con metodologías para recolectar datos o elaborar estimaciones matemáticas es fundamental para comprender con mayor exactitud cuál es el impacto generado (Figura 3).…”

“…(Enero-Junio, 2018 hábitat para el establecimiento de los proyectos, los accidentes causados por colisión contra estructuras como los aerogeneradores o las líneas de alta tensión, o por intervenir nocivamente en el uso del hábitat de las especies (Arnett et al, 2008;Powlesland, 2009;Atienza, Martín, Infante, Valls, & Domínguez, 2012). El impacto negativo sobre especies y poblaciones de vertebrados voladores se ha documentado extensivamente alrededor del mundo, en Norteamérica, Europa, Asia, Oceanía y partes subtropicales de Sudamérica (Snyder & Kaiser, 2009;Powlesland, 2009;Atienza et al, 2012;Zimmerling et al, 2013;Barros, Gastal de Magalhaes, & Rui, 2015;Beston, Diffendorfer, Loss, & Johnson, 2016;Johnson, Loss, Smallwood, & Erickson, 2016). Por ejemplo, en Canadá se calculó que una turbina puede matar hasta 26 aves por año según la ubicación de la planta eólica (Zimmerling, Pomeroy, d'Entremont, & Francis, 2013).…”

“…En Virginia del Oeste, Estados Unidos, se ha estimado que una turbina puede matar más de 47 murciélagos por año (Kerns & Kerlinger, 2004). Lo anterior se traduce en cientos de miles de aves y murciélagos muertos por año en Norteamérica (Arnett et al, 2008;Arnett & Baerwald, 2013;Beston et al, 2016).…”