We knew wind farms kill many bats, but science now says the death toll is even worse than estimated
Wind farms have a long-documented history of killing hundreds of thousands of birds and bats each year. As it turns out, the bat toll may be higher than previously estimated.
In a study published Monday, researchers in the United Kingdom found that environmental impact assessments — the main tool used to predict the ecological effects of a new energy development — commonly failed to predict the number of bats that would have fatal collisions with wind turbines’ spinning blades.
Even in the few cases where researchers said early assessments accurately predicted the danger to bats, efforts to mitigate those risks often did not succeed.
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“Bats are long-lived and very slow reproducers,” he said. “Their populations rely on very high adult survival rates. That means their populations recover from big losses very slowly.”
“We need to remember,” Mathews said, “that bats have been around for at least 30 million years and during that time have been able to fly happily without the risk of colliding with a spinning object.”
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We knew wind farms kill many bats, but science now says the death toll is even worse than estimated https://t.co/CU617r3kNu pic.twitter.com/Q0jLttZWeP
— National Post (@nationalpost) November 8, 2016
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