Sidebar: Easier on the Birds, January 2003

sidebar: easier on the birds

From half a mile away, the wind turbines in Madison, N.Y., seemed as harmless as the afternoon breeze they were harnessing. But the noise—like the swinging of a half-dozen rusty gates—would take some getting used to.

Scratch that. The sound was actually the honking of a flock of migrating geese rooting around in a stubbly field.

But the association of birds with wind power is often not so benign. Some environmentalists oppose wind turbines because of their potential to smite birds in mid-flight. Wind farms have been derided as "Bassmatics for birds" or "condor Cuisinarts." That reputation was always a bit overblown, experts say, and newer designs have almost eliminated it. "In a year, we found four dead birds in Madison," said Paul Kerlinger, a biologist and environmental consultant in Cape May, N.J. "People hit more birds with their cars."

You get only one chance to make a first impression, and the first utility-scale wind project to gain notice was installed in Altamont Pass, east of San Francisco, in the 1980s. Even today, the wind farm is one of the nation's largest, with some 7,000 turbines on 80,000 acres generating some 640 million kilowatt-hours a year.

But the site also happens to be the breeding ground for a number of bird species, including golden eagles, and the combination proved deadly. By one count, approximately 40 eagles and nearly a hundred other birds are struck and killed by rotor blades each year.

Fortunately, Altamont seems to be the exception, not the rule. Much of that is due to the evolution of wind turbine design. Rather than filling a site with thousands of small turbines, modern wind farms feature fewer, larger units. And the large rotors turn more slowly than smaller ones, creating less of a danger for passing birds. Tower design has changed for the better as well: Lattice towers that provide multiple perching spots have given way to sleek tubular models.

The result, says Kerlinger, is that bird deaths from newer wind installations are not ecologically significant. "Wind is, all things considered, about as environmentally benign a power source as you can find," he said.

The National Audubon Society tends to agree. Bob Perciasepe, Audubon's senior vice president for public policy, warns against setting up wind farms too close to environmentally sensitive areas or migratory fly-ways. But he said that coal-burning power plants pose a greater threat to bird populations than do wind farms.

"In the Northeast, loons are accumulating mercury from power plant emissions," Perciasepe said, and acid rain creates calcium-deficient eggshells. "There are avian impacts from fossil fuel pollution, and those impacts are lessened by using renewable energy."

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