A 1.5bn wind farm that could have powered almost 400,000 homes has been rejected by the British government because it might kill 90 small birds a year. Clearly, our avian friends present us with a (costly) problem that is not going away…
Over £10m, and three and a half years of planning, have been wasted on the 540 megawatt Docking Shoal offshore wind farm near the Lincolnshire and north Norfolk coast, which was recently turned down by the Department of Energy and Climate Change on Friday. “It appears to come down to 94 sandwich terns,” said a spokesman for Centrica, the parent group of British Gas which proposed the scheme. “It’s the cumulative impact of a number of wind farms in the area on birds.”
The rejection of Docking Shoal came as a second Centrica wind farm in the same area was given the go-ahead – the 580MW Race Bank project. And thankfully, a third 560MW project in the region, known as Dudgeon and operated by Warwick Energy, has also been given the green light by energy minister Charles Hendry.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds admitted it had opposed the Docking Shoal wind farm but said it supported the other schemes in the area. “The north Norfolk coast is an important summer site for sandwich terns and we have an international responsibility to protect them.”
It’s clearly (and understandably) a sensitive issue for the RSPB, but are their fears grounded?
Well, despite their vital contribution to green energy generation, there is some evidence that wind turbines can have adverse impacts on wildlife. For example, turbines can cause direct mortality in birds or bats due to collisions with turbine rotors or towers. And while certainly substantial in some sites (e.g. Smallwood & Karas 2009), estimates of such mortality vary widely.
In addition, the presence and/or operation of wind turbines can cause displacement or disturbance effects. For example, densities of breeding or foraging birds can be lower nearer turbines (e.g. Larsen & Madsen 2000; Pearce-Higgins et al. 2009) or flight routes may be affected (e.g. Larsen & Guillemette 2007) leading to effective habitat loss. In spite of efforts to document such effects of wind farms at a variety of sites, their consequences for the population dynamics of affected species remains unclear.
