Let’s see, they put up windmills to save the planet, then end up killing off endangered species, then have to limit the turbines to half days. FAIL
The Indiana bat is an endangered species and is protected by the federal Endangered Species Act.
Full story here
And it doesn’t seem to be limited to problems in Pennsylvania. Here’s a report about a wind farm in Canada:
Within 3/4 of a mile from the shores of Cape Vincent there already is an operational 86 turbine wind power plant on Wolfe Island, Canada. The Wolfe Island post construction bat mortality report determined that an estimated 1720 bats are killed per turbine per year. Cape Vincent can expect the same numbers because of similar habitat and shared species with Wolfe Island.
Probably helps to check the map first before building:
ACCIONA TURBINE AREAS
h/t to WUWT reader “bladeshearerJack Maloney”
“Within 3/4 of a mile from the shores of Cape Vincent there already is an operational 86 turbine wind power plant on Wolfe Island, Canada. The Wolfe Island post construction bat mortality report determined that an estimated 1720 bats are killed per turbine per year. ”
That’s over 147,000 bats a year at the Canadian wind farm!
I find this hard to believe but just want to note that the Canadian media will front page reports of dozens of ducks dying in a tar sands pool, but the slaughter at wind farms, nothing.
Batman was afraid of bats (at least, in the last movie) so maybe this is his revenge.
I wonder how much they are being compensated for not being able to run at night.
One can never be too cynical in matters involving money.
This really isn’t as funny as Antony makes out. Given the number of wind turbines required to power even are reasonable amount of electricity need, the impact on bids and bats would be devastating. The ecological impact of killing large numbers of birds could be very costly.
The ‘Kill a sparrow campaign’ was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward from 1958. Sparrows and other birds were killed in huge numbers, resulting in the near-extinction of the birds in China.
By 1960 it began to dawn on the Chinese that sparrows ate a large amount of insects, as well as grains. With no birds to predate them, locust and other pest populations exploded, with locust swarms appearing all over China. Now, killing all the birds did not directly cause the 30 million starvation deaths in the Great Chinese Famine, this was mostly politics, widespread deforestation and central planning. BUT the ecological imbalances most certainly exacerbated to collapse of farming.
It would have made a great satellite photo, in 1960 the locusts were so thick they blotted out the sky; settling across the fields and moving like a blanket from one end of China to the other.
Who knew there was a Chiropteran solution to the windmill problem.
Jim
Well…hmmm. Let’s see how this scenario might play out. Increase in windmills decimates bat populations, bats are no longer able to keep the mosquito populations in check, huge swarms of mosquitoes spread a new virus that is a side effect of genetically modified crops, and there you have it, the zombie apocalypse! OMG! It’s worse than we thought!
This was not unforseen. But, we the great unwashed can’t possibly know the future, right? I SAID, “RIGHT”!?
If the Tigers had a few more bats they might be playing the Cards tonight…I blame the Wind Turbines.
I just love little bats. They are a fantastic little animal. If the odd bat gets hurt because of human activity then too bad for the bat. If however, we erect giant blenders because of a the green religion, they waste money, crap up the scenery, and kill little bats then I say take the turbines down. They were stupid to begin with and now they are stupider because they hurt little fuzzy bats needlessly.
There are numerous instances of similar unintended consequences occurring and whether it is good or bad depends on your point of view. Most here, and I am one of them, feel this story is bad because it suits our purpose – to rid the world of wind generators, at least until they are more cost-effective and don’t destroy the environment. In this instance it is doubly ironic that we have these flying fauna mincers because the Greens wish them to save the same fauna.
Australia is inundated with cane toads to fix the problem of the cane beetle – the cure is worse than the disease.
A current story in Oz is the poisoning of mice and rabbits on Macquarie Island which are, apparently, causing bird deaths. In 2 years over 2000 birds have perished either directly from the baits or secondarily from eating baited vermin.
This post got me to thinking.
About ten years ago, I had the pleasure of witnessing the bats at the Congress Stree Bridge in Austin Texas.
I suspected it wouldn’t take me long to find something doom-like about Texas bat populations and climate, and sure enough…
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/drought/story/2011-10-04/texas-drought-bat-colonies/50658450/1
But then I also remembered reading this today, about Texas’ great success with windpower.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/18/us-utilities-texas-wind-idUSTRE79H5ZL20111018
Hmmmm….
From the article: “determined that an estimated 1720 bats are killed per turbine per year. ”
If an estimate is given with no background on how that estimate was determined, it is a meaningless number; a fabrication. I’ll wait until there is something real.
The bat population down around Pincher Creek Alberta has been hit hard too. Many years ago, local CTV broadcast about the demise of them, and that the University of Alberta was looking into it,….then very silent…not a peep, but lose a few ducks on a tails pond…..
cwj – yeah, it’s a little too much like Hansen’s modeling techniques.
Still, if they’re really whacking thousands of bats, you’d have enough bat bits on the ground to go out, sweep up, and weigh, so it ought to be possible to get a real-world number.
Moemo says:
October 18, 2011 at 6:42 pm
Moemo,
For my 6:46 pm post, I first googled in Google News: Austin bats
As a long time Tigers fan (1968 was the best year ever), twasn’t pretty.
stevo says:
“It’s a bit weird that you get such pleasure out of something as banal as a turbine operating at half capacity. You’re clearly very bitter about something, but I have a hard time seeing what.”
This may be lost on stevo, but I’m pretty bitter about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9srPoOU6_Z4 [Only 30 seconds long]
Multiply it by millions per year, and there is a major wildlife slaughter going on.
My declining bat population in the rookery attic has to do with late cold spring weather, late birthing, and early fall night-time temps. We have no turbines in the area. But if we did, the already cold-reduced bat population would be decimated.
Federal officials investigate eagle deaths at DWP wind farm
August 03, 2011
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/03/local/la-me-wind-eagles-20110803
California cuisinarts, now Pennsylvania bat blenders.
Doug Hoffman was trying to raise awareness of this over a year ago. The first half of this article is birds but later in the article he talks about bats:
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/wind-power-green-and-deadly
I taught a couple of ecology classes not long ago. One assignment required students to research how humans caused damage to the environment. One of my ace students chose to contrast wildlife deaths by wind generators against wildlife deaths by automobile. In the area where they overlap, birds and bats, she found single digits for wind generators vs hundreds of thousands for automobiles. It’s on the internet, you can look it up.
If they found one dead bat under one wind generator, I wonder how many they would find on the highway.
If you are into saving bats, google: Austin Texas bats
The silver lining is that wind turbine do not kill bats when there is no wind. /sarc
According to studies, the bats do not even need to be struck by the turbine blade. Simply passing through the rotor tip vortex of a passing blade tip is enough to rupture their lungs and kill them.
Wasnt an environmental assessment required before the windmills were constructed? They dont ever seem to miss those other rare critters
I will stand up for the intrinsic value of bats. A friend of mine has been studying bats for about fifty years now. Through my friend, I have been immersed in everything batty. Bats are quite wonderful and also very varied. The little ones that we see here in the US are a tad boring in the larger bat world.
Also, bats have great instrumental value. They navigate using sonar, or something similar to sonar. They have been very valuable in sonar research. They are very valuable in studying how a living creature creates a dynamic “image” or “model” of its environment. I might have been present at the first surgical operation to place a sophisticated probe in the brain of a healthy bat back in the mid 1970s. The research was immensely successful.
If there can be a genuine tragedy that results from human destruction of an animal population, this is it. Too bad that bats don’t have the look of playful puppies. Too bad that there is no Snail Darter crowd to lobby for bats.
People might think that this “unintended consequences” blunder by the Green windmill lobby is just a bump in the road. It is not. It will prove as destructive to coalitions among Greens as an issue like abortion has proved to be for Republicans.
I will invite someone else to speak for birds.