What do wind turbines and home prices have in common? Location, location, location.
America needs energy from every safe source possible, but wind power creates unique threats to birds. So it was a big deal when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced new wind energy siting guidelines today that will help us reduce our dependence on fossil fuels while protecting wildlife.
For the first time ever, major wind developers have pledged to voluntarily incorporate bird-friendly guidelines in the construction of new wind energy projects and to modify existing turbines.
These guidelines provide for mediation for potential disputes about where to put wind farms. But they are also a roadmap for collaboration between industry and conservationists.
The new guidelines will help steer wind turbines away from important habitat toward land already seeing the impacts of development. They will provide added protection for sites with high risk potential for birds. And, from now on, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will have a seat at the table for decisions on where to site wind projects. That's new and it's an important new safeguard.
The wind industry and conservationists agreed not only on protecting birds and bats in the air, but how to address what's known as habitat fragmentation on the ground. Now, wind developers will be expected to avoid building turbines in a way that cuts up and divides critical habitat areas in forests, grasslands or other threatened places.
We know from our Audubon science team that warming trends driven by carbon pollution from fossil fuels have already disrupted bird migration patterns up and down the four superhighways in the sky we call flyways. Nearly 60 percent of the 305 species found in North America in winter are shifting their ranges northward by an average of 35 miles. You've seen it in your own backyard.
Simply put, warming trends are one of the most significant threats to birds, their habitats, and global biodiversity.
National Audubon Society held one of the 22 seats on the Wind Turbine Guidelines Advisory Committee that was created in 2009 to develop these guidelines. Other Members experts came from the Nature Conservancy, Defenders of Wildlife, Massachusetts Audubon Society, and Bat Conservation International as well as major wind companies such as Iberdrola, AES Wind Energy, and Horizon. There were also state wildlife agencies and tribal representatives. The committee worked closely with the Department of the Interior and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for three years to develop workable, consensus-based guidelines..
The guidelines forged by this diverse group aren't only for the birds; they will create jobs for local economies and help make our nation a healthier place to live for people and wildlife. It's a real-world, bipartisan approach that recognize it's all about location, location, location.
David Yarnold is president and CEO of the National Audubon Society.
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For years, this things have bothered me...some I have not looked up. Perhaps the Navies of each country do send out some warning sonar blast before an explosion that is not too strong to injure wildlife....
Oil drilling in the US...I'm fine with it; just don't cut corners. Do it right so it lasts, safe for the workers, and safe for their children and the wildlife among them.
If we just thought things through the way we think through other inventions, from the viewpoint of all the animals affected (yes, we are animals, too, hate to remind some of us) I am confident we could be bright enough to solve our problems without creating havoc for other species.
How can any living thing survive in a world of frenetic, slicing swords? First, they disturb the soil of an ecosystem. Second, they deforest the system to pave the way for the massive, frantic swords. Then, what specie can make a living from this? Even the lowest lifeforms must escape the frenetic activity of immense, slicing swords after the ecosystem has been killed to pave the way for the new, green energies? Are we supposed to feel placated and good about birds and bats while mankind has just killed that much more of the Earth for a low output energy?
In every aspect of conservation the rule of law is, the conservation and preservation of Earth's ecosystems and their biological diversity, and if, dead fields of windmills kill ecosystems and the habitats/homes of all species of biodiversity, how is this anything but death to the Earth and all the reasons man breathes!
Have we lost our ecological minds?
The turbines in our area move so slow ... and are often not even moving. I can't imagine a bird getting whacked by one of them. The fact that many aren't even moving begs a follow up question.
Most of the very BEST sites for wind generation have already been taken. Places like the Tehachipi Pass and the Altamont Pass in California. These places have filleted a lot of avian species in their time, without ever once becoming truly competitive with mmore conventional methods of power generation.
Now, to spare the birds, we will site them in even less favorable places and modify them into even less efficient designs.
Sometimes it's best just to admit that the whole thing was a dumb idea and walk away from the economic and environmental disaster. That time may be fast approaching for wind energy.
I suspect it is going to get harder and harder to site a new wind farm. Not only do you have the MIMBYs, you will have to deal with local officials, utilities, landowners and now Fish and Wildlife (these are the same people who sent a SWAT team into the Gibson Guitar plant to enforce Indian and Madagascar laws). The greens need to realize that no energy source is environmentally benign.