Studies by Leibniz Universityin Germany prove that, as well as suffering high mortality rates in the species expected nearby, some that forage higher, and further are driven away by noise emissions from Industrial Wind Turbines.
Link to their paper here:
Not just bats either!
We have already noted studies in Finland proving the same applies to a variety of wildlife:
"Science| Emission-free energy Overview: Wind turbines cause many animal species to migrate The aim of the recent Finnish review is to help plan sites for wind power where the plants would disturb the fauna as little as possible.
A huge number of wind turbines have been built in FINLAND in the last few years, but more are planned.
Wind power production requires a lot of space, so zoning new areas in land areas requires tens of thousands of additional hectares of forest land. How does wind power affect the animals in these areas? Until now, the effect of wind power on animals has been examined mainly through the collision risk.
There have been reports from around the world that wind power has caused shocking deaths of birds of prey. In the United States, the wind power company ESI Energy had to pay millions in damages last year for the death of more than 150 bald eagles. In Germany, bat mortality is estimated to be high. However, wind power also affects the fauna in other ways, such as disturbances during construction, habitat fragmentation, infrasound and noise, but very little has been known about the effect of these factors. NOW, researchers from the Natural Resources Center (Luke) have prepared the most extensive review so far on the effect of wind power on the movement of animals from the area affected by wind power.
There are more than 84 test arrangements and 160 cases from different parts of the world, says the release. There would have been more studies. "We accepted for our review only experiments with concrete distance data such as meters or kilometers," says Professor Anne Tolvanen from the Center for Natural Resources, who led the study.
A REVIEW shows that the majority of animals studied avoid wind power. Some move kilometers away from wind power areas, some a shorter distance.
"In practice, the result means that the habitat of these animals shrinks," says Tolvanen.
Tolvanen says that the purpose of the work is to help zone sites for wind power where the wind turbines would disturb the fauna as little as possible.
In bird surveys, 63 percent of the studied species moved away from wind power areas. Barn owls, owls and hens turned out to be the most sensitive birds to wind power disturbances.
The highly endangered trumpeter vultures retreated at least five kilometers away from wind power areas and avoided wind power plants during migration as well.
Similar results have been obtained with rare sandhill cranes - there are no studies on our local cranes
Wind power also causes problems for CHICKEN BIRDS.
In Cantabria, Spain, home to a rare subspecies of the forest, the bird's population collapsed after several wind farms were erected in its habitat.
Researchers suspect that the collapse of the population is mainly due to habitat fragmentation caused by road construction and transmission lines.
Hen birds can also be disturbed by the sounds produced by wind turbines.
In the United States, the mortality of chicks nesting in the vicinity of a wind farm increased by half. The sounds of wind power can hinder the communication between the mother and the chicks, which is why the chicks are more vulnerable to predators.
A SURPRISING result was also that hens often collide with wind turbines - not the rotors, but the poles.
"It has been speculated that a white column against a dark background can look like a gap in the forest to the eyes of a hen," says Tolvanen.
Wind power can have two effects on the same species, displacement on the one hand and attraction on the other. Gravel can attract hens near the turbines because it is important for the hens' digestion.
ANOTHER group that seems to be disturbed by sounds are the keen-hearing owls.
In Norway, 48 eel fields were monitored before and after the construction of the wind power area. If the sandpipers' territory was located 4–5 kilometers from the nearest wind power area, the sandpipers' probability of abandoning the territory increased significantly.
A quite dramatic result was also obtained in a Spanish study, which investigated the habitat choice of the barn owl. The researchers did not find the first owl flag in the vicinity of the wind power areas.
Of the waterfowl, the most sensitive to wind power seems to be the bird of quiet salo ponds, the grebe. There is evidence that the plover avoids wind power in breeding areas, but especially in wintering areas.
Tens of thousands of terns spend their winter in the southeastern part of the North Sea, where a lot of wind power has been built in recent years.
The plovers have largely had to abandon their wintering grounds. The population has shrunk by 94 percent one kilometer from the wind turbines, and by more than 50 percent even ten kilometers away.
Among MAMMALS, reindeer and bats have been studied the most.
In the case of reindeer, the research is almost unanimous. Reindeer clearly avoid wind power. In some studies, reindeer maintain an odor gap of up to 15 kilometers to the nearest wind turbines.
Why reindeer react to wind power in this way is not yet known. One possibility is that the reindeer react to infrasounds caused by wind power.
Many large mammals are known to communicate using infrasound.
In some studies, reindeer retreat from the vicinity of wind turbines, especially during the summer season. It may be due to the fact that wind power hinders mother and calf communication.
There is also Finnish material about BATS.
In a study by the University of Turku, forest bats avoided wind turbines, staying an average of one kilometer away from them.
Bats flying in open terrain, on the other hand, do not avoid wind power; on the contrary, open areas cleared for wind power may even attract them to prey.
Central Europe's high bat mortality, on the other hand, is connected to bat migration, when thousands of bats fly at night at the height of the rotors.
Not ALL animals can move away from wind power areas, so if they don't adapt to the wind power environment, they will bear the consequences in their hides.
A good example are earthworms, which sensitively sense the vibrations of the soil.
A 2021 study by the University of Groningen found that earthworms are disappearing around wind turbines. There were 40 percent fewer earthworms at the measurement points near the wind turbines than at the farthest measurement points.
Earthworms are key species in their environment, so their decline can have ecosystem-level consequences.
According to Tolvanen, the effects of WIND POWER on animals today can be much greater than recent research suggests.
This is due to the fact that the absolute majority of the studies in this review were carried out at a time when wind turbines had a pole height of 50–100 meters. Current wind turbines are 200–250 meters high, and at the same time the noise and infrasounds they cause have increased.
Tolvanen also reminds that although some of the animals in the studies did not move away from the wind power area, this does not necessarily reflect the situation in real life.
There were few measurement sites, the presence of the animal was not studied before the construction of the wind power area, or the monitoring period of the study was too short.
For some species, the lack of migration may have been due to their preference for open areas.
There are only a few FINNISH studies on the effect of wind power.
The Natural Resources Center has recently started the WINDLIFE study, funded by wind power companies, which monitors the effect of wind power on three different animal species: golden eagles, red deer and wolves. Its results are expected in 2027".
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