RSPB wants wind turbines away from bird breeding areas

Britain’s highland birds are in threat of being driven off mountains and hills by onshore wind farms.

Ornithologists have found that birds, such as buzzards, golden plovers, red grouse and curlews, are abandoning their breeding grounds around wind farms. They said that birds are scared with the turbines because they visualize them as giant scarecrows.

The impact is little by now because only few onshore wind farms are built across the UK. But scientists warn that with hundreds of wind farm projects planned in the future, plus a more enlarged sizes in wind turbines, the effects on birds could become much worse.

James Pearce-Higgins, an ecologist from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), said that he found evidences on the reduction of bird breeding density near wind farms. He further added that for the first time, the Royal Society had quantified the effects of wind farms across a wide variety of bird species.

Pearce-Higgins’ research was performed with scientists from Scottish Natural Heritage and the local government’s environment research directorate. The scientific study is one of the first conducted to determine how wind farm construction programme affects wildlife.

Writing in the Journal of Applied Ecology, Pearce-Higgins said that birds tend to stop nesting half a mile away from any turbine. He however emphasized that RSPB is not against wind farms, but the group only wants turbines to be sited away from locations where birds breed and from migration routes.

Meanwhile, the British Wind Energy Association has stressed that the idea that turbines affect birds is just a myth. The association instead informs that climate change is a far greater danger.