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Two Funds for Two Tasks

By Paul Baicich

Windpower-and-Wildlife Research

Wind energy developers have engaged in costly studies on land, wildlife, and bird impacts from proposed sites. The studies vary in terms of scope, design, and utility. However, most are not peer-reviewed, and few have been made available to the public. Consequently, the studies are especially vulnerable to attack by opponents of wind energy projects.

At the same time, the many cost--including those for studying the possible effects on wildlife—are not recouped by the companies unless the projects are built and the units put online. Therefore, the cost of wildlife studies can function as a major disincentive to abandon a site. The more the developer spends on the preparations, the more the company seems committed to the project. If, however, there were a way to ensure that properly-designed, peer-reviewed and scientific research took place and could be made publicly available, thus removing the financial disincentive to developers to abandon a potential project site, there could be a benefit to all parties.

In short, there should be a public fund to pay for researching the effects of windpower on wildlife, and if a project were built, the company would then reimburse the fund. This would remove at least part of the business commitment to the project.

The result would be a body of well-designed, peer-reviewed, accessible research that would help all of us determine potential windpower effects and that decision-makers (such as government agencies that review these projects and conservation organizations) can depend on to assess individual sites.

Part of this funding should also extend to important post-construction studies.

The basics of this creative funding concept originated with Ellen Paul, Executive Director of the Ornithological Council, and Kevin Rackstraw, eastern North American regional director for Clipper Windpower.

Bird-and-Habitat Mitigation

Some injuries to birds will be inevitable whenever windpower facilities are constructed. These are, perhaps, unavoidable.

With the Altamont’s Buena Vista Energy example there was an agreed upon compensation for bird kills through purchase of conservation easements to enhance raptor populations. This compensatory approach to alleviate raptor loss is something that could actually be replicated on a national scale.

The loss of birdlife could be offset with the creation of a special fund to “replace” the birds lost. But that’s not the end of it. Each windpower unit, once online, should also have to pay for a “footprint” for habitat-and-bird conservation, regardless of any bird mortality.

Such a National Windpower Mitigation Fund could secure bird habitat (for instance, for the National Wildlife Refuge System and even for neotropical habitat south of the border). Such a fund could be administered by the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission (MBCC), the same commission that reinvests funding out of the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation [Duck] Stamp and approves North American Wetland Conservation Act (NAWCA) grants. A special advisory seat on the MBCC could be considered for the windpower industry when evaluating the specific investment of National Windpower Mitigation funds.

There are ways to make windpower greener. There are, indeed, ways to make it good for industry, the birds, and the public.

Washington State Guidelines for Wind Energy

The Guidelines for Wind Energy developed by the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife present some model standards to be considered by windpower developers and conservationists. Below are some of the Department’s considerations for avoiding and minimizing the effects of windpower operations on birds and other wildlife:

• Encourage windpower development in agricultural and already disturbed lands, including using existing transmission corridors and roads where possible.
• Use of tubular towers is recommended to reduce the ability of birds to perch on towers and to possibly reduce the risk of collision. Discourage the use of lattice towers, particularly those with horizontal cross-members.
• Discourage tower types that employ guy wires. If guy-wired towers are approved, encourage the requirement of bird flight diverters on the guy wires.
• Avoid high bird concentration areas, especially concentration areas of sensitive status species and breeding sites.
• Discourage the use of rodenticides to control rodent burrowing around towers.
• Encourage the protection of priority habitats and species (PHS).
• Minimize the use of overhead powerlines, but when used, employ designs that avoid and minimize impacts to raptors and other birds (such as adequate conductor spacing and using perch guards).
• Minimize the use of lights on towers in accordance with federal, state, and local requirements wherever possible because they may attract flying wildlife to the vicinity of the turbines in certain conditions.
• Encourage the control of noxious weeds in accordance with federal, state, and local laws, and encourage the control of detrimental weedy species that invade existing habitat as a result of disturbance from construction and operation.
• Encourage the requirement of a complete road siting and management plan, including vehicle-driving speeds that minimize wildlife mortality.
• Encourage the requirement of a fire protection plan.
• Encourage a decommissioning condition that would require removal of the turbines and infrastructure when it ceases operation and restoration of the site to approximate pre-project conditions.