New evidence indicates that millions of bats are being slaughtered every year by wind turbines. This astonishing figure of wildlife massacre arises from a reasonable extrapolation of casualty numbers collected by a group of German zoologists. Their data cover a number of years, and more specifically a recent two-month detailed survey at a wind farm near Berlin. Germany has nearly 30,000 onshore wind turbines, and the researchers suggested their findings translated to 200,000 bat fatalities every year in that country alone. Land-based wind turbines are common across many parts of the world, and a total figure running into millions is possible.
The researchers note that the annual German losses of bats will “cause a decline of populations of high collision-risk species”. They warn that this population decline “could manifest rapidly”, since mostly females and juvenile bats get killed by turbines. Bats have low reproductive rates and may not be able to compensate quickly for the casualties, they note.
The paper is of considerable interest and the full methodology of the field work, along with considerations about turbine age and operational curtailments, are shown here. The researchers took data going back 20 years from the national carcass repository in Germany and from a detailed 2021 two-month search of the ground near three turbines west of Berlin. It was estimated that nearly 300 bats died during the 2021 field survey, and this equated to 55 casualties per megawatt generated.
These are shocking figures. Bat ‘migrations’ were occurring at the time of the field survey, but such movement is common in bat populations. The UK has 14 GW of installed onshore wind capacity, or 14,000 MW. A multiplication of 55 casualties per MW produces 770,000 bat deaths. Of course all this installed capacity is unlikely to be in continual use, and periods of low bat movement and hibernation will lower the death toll considerably. But promoters of green energy need to be specific about the annual bat carnage they are prepared to accept – 50,000 deaths, 100,000, 200,000? The U.K. Government’s own in-house green activist unit, the Committee for Climate Change, is recommending that Britain should more than double its onshore wind capacity to 29 GW by the end of the decade.
Bat conservation protections are common across the U.K. and building developments are sometimes halted to accommodate their habitats. But far less robust measures seem to be in place for any ‘green’ projects. The Bat Conservation Trust (BCT) notes there has been evidence of bat collisions with wind turbines for 20 years, but it supports the development of wind power. It supports “mitigation” measures that are known to be “successful in reducing the impacts of wind turbines on bats”. It would be useful if the BTC could put an actual figure on an acceptable death toll.
Bats species are thought to make up a third of U.K. mammal fauna and occur in most lowland habitats across the U.K. But wind turbines present a danger to many flying animals in various habitats. Earlier this year, a group of American ecologists discovered “distinct patterns of population – and subpopulation level – vulnerability for a wider variety of bird species found dead at renewable energy facilities”. Their paper examined numerous wind and solar facilities in California and found birds at greatest risk were raptors such as golden eagles, kites and owls. These birds are often all-year residents around wind farms, where they require open skies to catch wind currents. For their part, the wind turbines generate enormous air fluctuations, while massive blade tips travel at over 150 mph.
As is often the case, animal charities appear conflicted between the promotion of ‘green’ energy and protecting the lives of bats and birds. In the U.K., Andrew Dodd from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said we clearly needed more offshore wind turbines, “and the RSPB supported that”. But favourable spots in the North Sea are starting to fill up and, said Dodd, “we have to avoid development in the most sensitive areas”.
Dodd made his comments in a BBC report surrounding the permission for the giant Hornsea Three development, an area frequently visited by kittiwakes. These birds are at particular risk, since they have been spotted trying to slalom their way through such fields springing up in the North Sea. The energy secretary at the time, Alok Sharma, is said to have acknowledged that wildlife would be harmed by Hornsea Three, but granted consent on the ‘balance of benefits’. The cynical might note that the same ‘balance of benefits’ argument was curiously absent from the recent onshore gas fracking ban – reliable and secure energy supplies, against the risk of earth tremors equivalent to someone falling off a chair.
Journalist James Delingpole has been a long-time environmental critic of wind farms: “If you really hate nature, you’ll love wind farms. Not only do they destroy the landscape, blight views, increase flooding but… they kill rare birds and bats on an industrial scale.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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The eco – greenies. The eco industry.
All of them, all of it, is just humanity and planet hating evil. A globalist con trick matching at least the scale of evil residing in the C1984 Scamdemic. This vile industry desperately needs closing down because if not it will destroy our civilisation and the planet too.
This is no longer about eco- nutters, this is out and out eco Fascism with Nazi overtones.
Wind farms: Trinkets of the Feudalists and monuments to the biggest global scam in human history. Like dogs tagging lamp posts and hedges, wind farms grow wherever the globalists piss – permanent reminders of their physical and symbolic land grab over our world and our lives.
What’s happening with these modular nuclear reactors from Rolls Royce? Anyone know? It all seems to have gone quiet on the clean reliable abundant energy front.
Who was it who once famously said “Giving society clean cheap abundant energy would be like giving a child a loaded gun.”? Probably Malthusian and genocide-by-stealth enthusiast David Attenborough.
The Malthusians would really wet the bed if Nikola Tesla’s free energy devices ever became part of consensus reality.
For many years I’ve regularly walked a little hill road with the dog from spring to early Autumn. Since a turbine was erected close by, about four years ago, all the curlews, snipe, wheatears and golden plovers have disappeared. Even the hares.
Meanwhile, here in the UK, housing developers have to spend large amounts of time and money to check if any bats roost in the vicinity of the site and install costly lodges for them, even supposing the project can proceed at all.
We’re not meant to use the tennis club floodlights after 10pm in case it disturbs nearby bats.
I know The Daily Sceptic likes to stir the pot, and stick it to the envirochondriac zealots, but there is really less here than meets the eye. First of all, climate change is also quite harmful to bats, and wind turbines are pretty small potatoes compared to things like White Nose Syndrome. Secondly, bladeless turbines also exist as well now. Thirdly, even turbines with blades can be made safer: for birds, simply painting one of the blades black will discourage them from flying into them, and for bats, a little radar can scare them away from getting too close apparently. And finally, if you make the perfect the enemy of the good, you ultimately end up with neither.
“First of all, climate change is also quite harmful to bats”
Are you stating that you believe in the notion of climate change as espoused by the eco nutters?
A changing climate is a factor of living on a planet whizzing through space and certainly has nothing to do with the activities of mankind.
I do believe that anthropogenic climate change is real, even if the oligarchs do exaggerate it and exploit it for their own nefarious ends all the same. Both premises can nonetheless be true without the universe exploding.
Oh dear!
Believing things is religion. It is much better when dealing with matters of science (or alleged science) to either know things or not know them, since what people believe is irrelevant.
1) Where’s the empirical (not computer model based) evidence that the small amount of warming we’ve seen in the last few decades, mostly in night-time minimum temperatures of Northern climates, has been in any way harmful to bats? It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense.
2) Where are all these bladeless turbines? I can take a ten mile journey from my home and see dozens of bad / bird choppers on the horizon, but have yet to encounter one without blades.
3) Hitting blades isn’t the only problem, or even the problem. The vacuum caused by blade turbulence is enough to implode the lungs of the poor things if they get close. They don’t have to be directly hit, hence the huge numbers being killed.
If you make idealism the enemy of reality, you end up with neither.
True, direct empirical evidence of climate change adversely affecting bats specifically thus far is rather lacking, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how runaway global heating would ultimately be generally harmful to all wildlife sooner or later. Including birds and bats, of course. And there’s of course White Nose Syndrome, a fungus that may or may not be related.
Bladeless turbines are fairly new, so they mostly haven’t been installed yet, but they certainly do exist:
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/aeromine-wind-turbine-without-blade
Which would not only prevent direct collision with blades by definition, but also prevent barotrauma as well.
The hypocrisy of the fossil fuel industry shills suddenly pretending they care about wildlife is what I am attacking here. We know the numbers are based on extrapolation and are thus prone to gross exaggeration by people with an agenda. As for the implicit idea that the only acceptable number of bird and bat deaths is zero, well, that is just as ridiculous as the Zero Covid zealots.
White Nose Syndrome may or may not be a bigger threat to bats (it probably depends on the species and geographical location), but it’s a pretty crap argument to say that just because millions of bats are dying from one particular cause it’s O.K. to kill another million with wind turbines. That’s a bit like saying that because speeding motorists kill a thousand people a year it’s O.K. to drive while drunk since drink drivers only kill a couple of hundred people a year.
The difference is that wind turbines arguably serve a useful purpose, even a humanitarian purpose, whereas drunk driving clearly does not. Bad analogy, try again.
“Climate change” will only be harmful to bats (or anything else) if it is actually occurring, and at the moment there is no evidence that our CO2 emissions are causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate. So, your statement that “climate change is also quite harmful to bats” is a statement of certainty where there is NONE.
Never mind, building projects are being delayed or cancelled to protect bats…
Particularly vulnerable are birds of prey that are always looking down for a potential meal. I heard that the Red Kite has been virtually wiped out in Germany who have nearly 40,000 wind turbines. ———–How totally absurd, when all that is required are a few Nuclear plants tucked away in a corner somewhere.