Hello, Bob!

Here's one article about this.

From:
https://www.audubon.org/news/will-wind-turbin...

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                   Will Wind Turbines Ever Be Safe For Birds?
   Sure, it's green energy-but it also results in hundreds of thousands of
   bird deaths each year.

   By Emma Bryce
   March 16, 2016
       
   In 2010 David Newstead, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field biologist,
   visited the Gulf shoreline of Laguna Madre, Texas, to survey skimmers,
   terns, and egrets. But it was a flock of 15 American White Pelicans that
   caught his eye, flying toward the nearby Penascal wind farm. As he
   watched, a pelican at the flock's tail end was swiped by a massive turbine
   blade and "literally `erased' from the air," Newstead wrote afterwards.
   This in itself isn't surprising-wind turbines are notorious bird
   killers-but this specific farm was supposedly equipped with radar that
   could detect approaching birds and halt the blades. The radar had failed
   to do its job.

   Wind turbines kill an estimated 140,000 to 328,000 birds each year in
   North America, making it the most threatening form of green energy. And
   yet, it's also one of the most rapidly expanding energy industries: more
   than 49,000 individual wind turbines now exist across 39 states.
   The wind industry has the incentive to stop the slaughter: Thanks to the
   Migratory Bird Treaty Act, it's illegal to kill any bird protected by the
   Act-even if the death is "incidental," meaning it occurs unintentionally
   on the part of the wind farm. The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act
   recommends that to avoid eagle deaths, specifically, companies seriously
   consider where they site their wind developments, and that they also limit
   turbines' impact using techniques like radar to detect incoming birds. But
   as the accident at the Penascal wind farm shows, it's unclear if
   deterrents like these actually work.

   The Ways Wind Farms Try to Scare Birds Away

   There are many kinds of retrofits that people are testing to hopefully
   make wind turbines better for birds. Here are some of the options.

   Cameras, Radar, and GPS: The most advanced and widespread technologies are
   those that use radar and GPS to detect incoming flocks and turn off the
   turbines in time for the birds to fly through. In 2006, company Babcock
   and Brown was the first to install such a system at the Gulf Wind Project
   in Texas (now owned by Pattern Energy). At other sites, these technologies
   are species-specific: In California's Tehachapi Mountains, wind developer
   Terra-Gen has tailored its bird detection systems to protect the
   California Condor, North America's largest and most threatened bird
   species (only about 230 survive in the wild). Since most condors are
   tagged with GPS sensors, the wind farm sets up a system that shuts down
   the turbines when a condor is within two miles of the wind farm-all in
   less than two minutes. 

   Bright Blades: A 2010 study suggested that purple wind turbines would in
   theory cause fewer bird strikes than the typical white ones. That's
   because white blades attract insects, and insects attract foraging birds.
   So, cutting down on the insects could dissuade foraging avians from coming
   too close.

   Bright Lights: Lighting systems are also being investigated as a deterrent
   tool: In 2012 the National Science Foundation awarded a $150,000 grant to
   researchers who showed that UV lighting could be used to deter bats and
   birds from wind farm sites. Right now, their patent is pending.
   Turbines That Look Like Trees: As an alternative to the designs we have
   today, inventors are increasingly looking to vertical axis turbines, whose
   "blades" circulate around a central spire, allowing plenty of them to be
   packed into a space together. This allows inventors to try out all kinds
   of artful designs (which could make them less of an eyesore on the
   landscape)-and, it's also thought that these vertical shapes might be less
   detrimental to birds.

   Smart Blades: Renewables company Laufer Wind has partnered with the
   government to see if better understanding of how birds fly might help them
   design improved blades trained to recognize approaching birds. To that
   end, they've been studying the flight of a domesticated falcon, a bird
   called "Houdini." The bird is fitted with a GPS chip that records his
   motions as he soars, yielding data that will create a precise algorithm of
   Houdini's flight. Recently, the team has expanded the research to include
   eagles-one Golden and one Bald. These two trained raptors, named
   "Spirit" and "Nova," are providing GPS-tagged flight information, just
   like Houdini. Armed with better information on how birds fly, the
   researchers would create a radar system more capable of picking birds out
   of the landscape, and shutting down in time for them to safely pass,
   explains Jason Roadman, the project's NREL field test engineer.
   Additionally, the researchers are testing out a camera system that can
   spot birds up to 0.62 miles away, which would prompt a turbine shutdown.  

   Too Good To Be True?

   But do any of these methods actually mean fewer birds die? Unfortunately,
   proof is scant. "I would say it's highly experimental; none of it has been
   proven to work," says Garry George, renewable energy director at Audubon
   California. In the case of the obliterated pelican, the wind farm
   operators said their radar was built to detect large incoming flocks, not
   individual birds (federal law enforcement officials visited the scene, but
   there's no public information on whether the farm was charged for the
   bird's death). Other radars-even state-of-the-art facilities such as the
   White Pine County Wind Farm in Nevada, where two Golden Eagles died in
   three years-have bad track records.

   And the plot to train blades to recognize bird flight is equally flawed,
   says Lisa Linowes, the founder of prominent wind industry watchdog
   WindAction. "I think it's yet another opportunity for money to be spent
   [on something] that's already been tried," she says. Besides, even if it
   does work, every species of bird approaches a turbine in a different
   manner, so training blades to recognize all birds could take years of
   research-something the NREL and Laufer Wind researchers acknowledge too.
   Plus, it can take people 45 minutes to shut down turbines after birds have
   been detected, Linowes says-plenty of time for birds to reach them, and
   get hit. Some retrofits, like the condor avoidance scheme, factor this
   issue into the design-but many do not.

   There is one easy way wind companies can avoid bird deaths: Put wind farms
   in places where birds are unlikely to fly in the first place. "Right now
   one of our big considerations is siting," says Christy Johnson-Hughes, a
   biologist from the USFWS's ecological services. Migration pathways and
   certain landscape features-such as wetlands and migratory stopover
   points-are known areas where birds gather. "Putting turbines in those
   exact places is probably risky," says Brian Millsap, USFWS national raptor
   coordinator. "Siting is the one and only thing that we really understand
   at this point." 

   The Path Forward

   One of the most notorious wind farms-Altamont Pass Wind Farm in northern
   California-is a lesson in how poor siting can hurt birds. The farm, which
   straddles a windswept mountain pass, is also in the midst of a major avian
   migration route, and has been responsible for tens of thousands of birds'
   deaths since its inception in the 1960s.

   The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now recommends that all new wind
   developments consider several factors before choosing their location.
   Among these, companies are encouraged to avoid birds' migration routes,
   places where raptors' prey congregates, and water-filled landscapes that
   would encourage birds to flock, such as wetlands. These guidelines are
   currently voluntary-but with an update to the MBTA expected in the
   upcoming year, that may change soon.

   In months to come, USFWS plans to overhaul the MBTA, and in a show of
   pragmatism, it's proposing that wind farms be allowed "incidental take
   permits," which would make it legal for wind companies to
   (unintentionally) kill a limited number of protected species each year.
   But companies would only be awarded permits if they can prove they're
   doing everything possible to avoid bird strikes, like ensuring best siting
   and deterring birds from blades.

   "The permit rule would modernize and strengthen the Migratory Bird Treaty
   Act and put in place critical new protections for America's birds from
   coast to coast," says Mike Daulton, who leads Audubon's national policy
   team. By placing pressure on wind companies to abide by these rules-or
   face massive fines-it could protect North America's most threatened
   species. It's "a win-win for the industry and for birds," says
   Daulton. "It will provide legal certainty to the industry and new
   protections for the birds."

   If any retrofits are found to be effective, they may become part of the
   future best management practices for wind farms, too. Recognizing their
   potential, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awards grants to
   researchers who want to test experimental technologies, and the non-profit
   organization American Wind and Wildlife Institute (AWWI) is compiling the
   first comprehensive catalogue of these solutions. AWWI also plans to
   conduct independent reviews of each product.

   There's no doubt that turbines-as we know them now-are flawed inventions,
   and it could be a long, experiment-filled time before we manage to craft
   the perfect design. But in a warming world, where more and more birds are
   going to be threatened by climate change, a pragmatic approach to energy
   creation and safeguarding the planet's birds might be the one we have to
   accept.

   Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated that it takes 45
   minutes for turbines to stop-in fact it is the whole process of turning
   them off that takes 45 minutes. 
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Later,
Sean

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