WAG - Windfarm Action Group - the growing blight on the good earth ☯
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The Environment
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People concerned with the environment are increasingly aware of the negative impacts of the giant machines and their additional supporting infrastructure (including heavy-duty roads, transformers, and powerlines) on wetlands, birds, bats, beneficial insects, and other wildlife — both directly and by degrading, fragmenting, and destroying habitat for their construction.
June 25th 2010 ~ Rare red kite found dead at Fairburn Windfarm
June 25th 2010 ~ Rare red kite found dead at a wind farmthat had been termed "harmless to wildlife"
• The Scotsman reports that a rare red kite has been found dead at the Fairburn wind farm in Ross-shire in the Highlands, killed after colliding with a turbine . It was examined by a Scottish Agricultural College vet and was found to have suffered bruising and fractures consistent with an impact.
◦ "...The kite was satellite tagged as part of a monitoring project under the Eyes To The Skies project. Its flight path was being logged by RSPB Scotland as well as children from Aviemore Primary School, who adopted the bird and nicknamed it "Tweety Pie". RSPB red kite community officer Claire Buchanan said: "We had been tracking its progress through its satellite tag and plotting its movements on our dedicated website. It is really sad that we have lost Tweety Pie and, of course, the children have been much saddened about what has happened. Any loss of a kite is serious because the red kite population on the Black Isle is already under intense pressure due to illegal killing."
• Read in full
• An informed emailer writes today, "Interestingly, on the continent, collisions with power lines and wind farms are a major cause of death for white-tailed eagles. One German study found 22% mortality from power lines and wind farms. In a Swedish study it was 50% and in a Finnish one it ws 36%. In Norway, wind turbines have caused the deaths of four white-tailed eagles on islands off the Norwegian coast. At a 68-turbine windfarm on the Norwegian island of Smola, 11 eagles were killed within five months and 30 eagles (several species) have failed to return to their nests, although they normally return year on year.. In America they have killed vast numbers and in Spain as well."
• The Scotsman reports that a rare red kite has been found dead at the Fairburn wind farm in Ross-shire in the Highlands, killed after colliding with a turbine . It was examined by a Scottish Agricultural College vet and was found to have suffered bruising and fractures consistent with an impact.
◦ "...The kite was satellite tagged as part of a monitoring project under the Eyes To The Skies project. Its flight path was being logged by RSPB Scotland as well as children from Aviemore Primary School, who adopted the bird and nicknamed it "Tweety Pie". RSPB red kite community officer Claire Buchanan said: "We had been tracking its progress through its satellite tag and plotting its movements on our dedicated website. It is really sad that we have lost Tweety Pie and, of course, the children have been much saddened about what has happened. Any loss of a kite is serious because the red kite population on the Black Isle is already under intense pressure due to illegal killing."
• Read in full
• An informed emailer writes today, "Interestingly, on the continent, collisions with power lines and wind farms are a major cause of death for white-tailed eagles. One German study found 22% mortality from power lines and wind farms. In a Swedish study it was 50% and in a Finnish one it ws 36%. In Norway, wind turbines have caused the deaths of four white-tailed eagles on islands off the Norwegian coast. At a 68-turbine windfarm on the Norwegian island of Smola, 11 eagles were killed within five months and 30 eagles (several species) have failed to return to their nests, although they normally return year on year.. In America they have killed vast numbers and in Spain as well."
RSPB - Bird Sensitivity Map Scotland
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July 5th 2010 Primary School forced to turn off wind turbine
July 5th 2010 ~ Primary school forced to turn off wind turbine after bird deaths
- The Sunday Telegraph reports that Southwell Community Primary School, Portland has been forced to switch off a £20,000 wind turbine because it keeps killing passing seabirds.
- "The rotary blades on the 30ft (9m) structure have struck at least 14 birds in the past six months. The turbine, at Southwell Community Primary School, Portland, was installed 18 months ago thanks to a grant from the Department of Energy and Climate Change. ... It provided six kilowatts of power an hour, but its performance was overshadowed by the number of birds killed - far higher than the one fatality per year predicted by the manufacturer. Headteacher Stuart McLeod was even forced to come into school early to clear up the bodies before his young pupils spotted them. ... "We've tried so hard to be eco-friendly but now we can't turn it on. We can't get rid of it either because we bought the turbine we had to apply for grants and the grant from the Department of Energy and Climate Change states that it has to stay on site for five years." The school is now negotiating with Dorset County Council about the future of the wind turbine."
March 13th 2010
Wind turbines: 'Eco-friendly' - but not to eagles-the same hills that provide lift for soaring birds offer heavily subsidised profits for wind farm developers writes Christopher Booker in The Telegraph
In all my scores of items over the years on why the obsession with wind turbines will be seen as one of the major follies of our age, there is one issue I haven’t touched on. The main practical objection to turbines, of course, is that they are useless, producing derisory amounts of electricity at colossal cost. (Yet the Government wants us to spend £100 billion on building thousands more of them which, even were it technically possible, would do virtually nothing to fill the fast-looming 40 per cent gap in our electricity supply.)
A feature of these supposedly environment-friendly machines that I haven’t mentioned, however, is their devastating effect on wildlife, notably on large birds of prey, such as eagles and red kites. Particularly disturbing is the extent to which the disaster has been downplayed by professional bodies, such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Britain and the Audubon Society in the US, which should be at the forefront of exposing this outrage, but which have often been drawn into a conflict of interest by the large sums of money they derive from the wind industry itself.
There is plenty of evidence for the worldwide scale of this tragedy. The world’s largest and most carefully monitored wind farm, Altamont Pass in California, is estimated to have killed between 2,000 and 3,000 golden eagles alone in the past 20 years. Since turbines were erected on the isle of Smola, off Norway, home to an important population of white-tailed sea eagles, destruction is so great that last year only one chick survived. Thanks to wind farms in Tasmania, a unique sub-species of wedge-tailed eagles faces extinction. And here in Britain, plans to build eight wind farms on the Hebridean islands, among Scotland’s largest concentration of golden eagles, now pose a major threat to the species’ survival in the UK.
Related Articles on that page
• The cost to every household of subsidising energy generation by wind farms 13 Mar 2010
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE
In all my scores of items over the years on why the obsession with wind turbines will be seen as one of the major follies of our age, there is one issue I haven’t touched on. The main practical objection to turbines, of course, is that they are useless, producing derisory amounts of electricity at colossal cost. (Yet the Government wants us to spend £100 billion on building thousands more of them which, even were it technically possible, would do virtually nothing to fill the fast-looming 40 per cent gap in our electricity supply.)
A feature of these supposedly environment-friendly machines that I haven’t mentioned, however, is their devastating effect on wildlife, notably on large birds of prey, such as eagles and red kites. Particularly disturbing is the extent to which the disaster has been downplayed by professional bodies, such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Britain and the Audubon Society in the US, which should be at the forefront of exposing this outrage, but which have often been drawn into a conflict of interest by the large sums of money they derive from the wind industry itself.
There is plenty of evidence for the worldwide scale of this tragedy. The world’s largest and most carefully monitored wind farm, Altamont Pass in California, is estimated to have killed between 2,000 and 3,000 golden eagles alone in the past 20 years. Since turbines were erected on the isle of Smola, off Norway, home to an important population of white-tailed sea eagles, destruction is so great that last year only one chick survived. Thanks to wind farms in Tasmania, a unique sub-species of wedge-tailed eagles faces extinction. And here in Britain, plans to build eight wind farms on the Hebridean islands, among Scotland’s largest concentration of golden eagles, now pose a major threat to the species’ survival in the UK.
Related Articles on that page
• The cost to every household of subsidising energy generation by wind farms 13 Mar 2010
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE
A site in the USA
BATS
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WHY WE NEED BATS
With over 1,100 species of bats worldwide, most people have seen these creatures swooping through the sky at twilight. These animals are beneficial to the ecosystems within which they live and also offer several advantages to humans.
- Insect Control
Though some bats eat fruit, nectar and pollen, most eat insects. In fact, bats eat billions of tons of insects every summer, according to Bat World Sanctuary, a nonprofit bat rescue organization. Consequently, bats are an enormous help to farmers as a natural insect control tool. - Seed Dispersal
Bats scatter the seeds of the fruits and plants they eat through elimination. According to Bat World Sanctuary, "Over 95 percent of rain forest regrowth comes from seeds that have been spread by fruit bats." - Pollination
Some bats provide pollination, especially in deserts and tropical areas. Flower-visiting bats typically live in the Pacific Islands, Africa and Southeast Asia, though some migrate north into the southern U.S. every spring, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. - Guano
Guano is the name for the excrement of seabirds, seals and bats. Guano is very nitrogen-rich, according to the Encyclopedia Smithsonian. It provides natural fertilization in the wild and has been successfully used as fertilizer by humans.
