Despite past success and ambitious targets, constructing onshore wind projects in Scotland is not without its difficulties. Rhys Bullman, Principal Ecologist at environmental firm SLR Consulting, looks at why ornithology is nearly always towards the top of the list of important issues to get right.
The wind energy industry in Scotland has always been ambitious, with the devolved Government setting an interim target of attaining 50 per cent renewable energy by 2015 and 100 per cent by 2020. With an installed renewables capacity currently around 6,500 MW, mostly onshore wind, renewables already deliver over 40 per cent of Scotland’s gross renewable energy consumption. – both in terms of terms of initial risk analysis and then robust survey design and impact assessment.
“Scotland is known throughout the world for its sweeping and dramatic upland landscapes of high moorland covered hills, lochs and glens with ancient scots pine forest. The lowlands comprise vast areas of boggy peatlands with their complex pool systems as well as rich rolling agricultural lands leading down to the Firths and estuaries on the coasts. With a coastline of some 9,000km, the huge number of offshore islands are home to hundreds of thousands of nesting seabirds. The range of different habitats in such a small land area is staggering and as a result Scotland has a very iconic and distinct avifauna.
Not only does it host a broad range of important resident species such as golden eagle, red throated diver, black grouse and hen harrier, it also provides a wintering area for many tens of thousands of migratory species of waders and wildfowl that breed further north in Iceland and beyond. These include pink footed goose, whooper swan and golden plover.
Because of its distinct and varied bird life Scotland has many protected sites designated for birds, notably, European protected sites called Special Protection Areas (SPAs). SPAs are selected for a number of rare, threatened or vulnerable bird species listed in Annex I of the EC Birds Directive, and also for regularly occurring migratory species. These reserves (often known as Natura 2000 sites) are to be found throughout Europe and all have the same statutory level of protection. In Scotland there are 153 such sites covering an area of over 5,000 square miles.
