page_title: Environmental impact of wind power
section_title: Birds
hierarchical_section_title: Environmental impact of wind power / Ecology / Impact on wildlife / Birds
caption_attribution_description: sterna paradisaea (Küstenseeschwalbe, arctic tern) in the air at the Eidersperrwerk
context_page_description: The environmental impact of wind power is relatively minor when compared to that of fossil fuel power. Compared with other low-carbon power sources, wind turbines have one of the lowest global warming potentials per unit of electrical energy generated by any power source. According to the IPCC, in assessments of the life-cycle global warming potential of energy sources, wind turbines have a median value of between 15 and 11 depending on whether offshore or onshore turbines are being assessed.
  Onshore wind farms can have significant impacts on the landscape, as typically they need to be spread over more land than other power stations and need to be built in wild and rural areas, which can lead to "industrialization of the countryside" and habitat loss. Conflicts arise especially in scenic and culturally-important landscapes. Siting restrictions may be implemented to limit the impact. The land between the turbines and access roads can still be used for farming and grazing.
  Habitat loss and fragmentation are the greatest impacts of wind farms on wildlife.
context_section_description: The impact of wind energy on birds, which can fly into turbines directly, or indirectly have their habitats degraded by wind development, is complex.  Projects such as the Black Law Wind Farm have received wide recognition for its contribution to environmental objectives, including praise from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, who describe the scheme as both improving the landscape of a derelict opencast mining site and also benefiting a range of wildlife in the area, with an extensive habitat management projects covering over 14 square kilometres.
  The meta-analysis on avian mortality by Benjamin K. Sovacool led him to suggest that there were a number of deficiencies in other researchers' methodologies. Among them, he stated were a focus on bird deaths, but not on the reductions in bird births: for example, mining activities for fossil fuels and pollution from fossil fuel plants have led to significant toxic deposits and acid rain that have damaged or poisoned many nesting and feeding grounds, leading to reductions in births. The large cumulative footprint of wind turbines, which reduces the area available to wildlife or agriculture, is also missing from all studies including Sovacool's. Many of the studies also made no mention of avian deaths per unit of electricity produced, which excluded meaningful comparisons between different energy sources. More importantly, it concluded, the most visible impacts of a technology, as measured by media exposure, are not necessarily the most flagrant ones.
  Sovacool estimated that in the US wind turbines kill between 20,000 and 573,000 birds per year, and has stated he regards either figure as minimal compared to bird deaths from other causes. He uses the lower 20,000 figure in his study and table (see Causes of avian mortality table) to arrive at a direct mortality rate per unit of energy generated figure of 0.269 per GWh for wind power. Fossil-fueled power plants, which wind turbines generally require to make up for their weather dependent intermittency, kill almost 20 times as many birds per gigawatt hour (GWh) of electricity according to Sovacool. Bird deaths due to other human activities and cats total between 797 million and 5.29 billion per year in the U.S. Additionally, while many studies concentrate on the analysis of bird deaths, few have been conducted on the reductions of bird births, which are the additional consequences of the various pollution sources that wind power partially mitigates.
  Of the bird deaths Sovacool attributed to fossil-fuel power plants, 96 percent were due to the effects of climate change. While the study did not assess bat mortality due to various forms of energy, he considered it not unreasonable to assume a similar ratio of mortality. The Sovacool study has provoked controversy because of its treatment of data. In a series of replies, Sovacool acknowledged a number of large errors, particularly those that relate to his earlier "0.33 to 0.416" fatalities overestimate for the number of bird deaths per GWh of nuclear power, and cautioned that "the study already tells you the numbers are very rough estimates that need to be improved."
  A 2013 meta-analysis by Smallwood identified a number of factors which result in serious under-reporting of bird and bat deaths by wind turbines. These include inefficient searches, inadequate search radius, and carcass removal by predators. To adjust the results of different studies, he applied correction factors from hundreds of carcass placement trials. His meta-analysis concluded that in 2012 in the United States, wind turbines resulted in the deaths of 888,000 bats and 573,000 birds, including 83,000 birds of prey.
  Also in 2013, a meta-analysis by Scott Loss and others in the journal Biological Conservation found that the likely mean number of birds killed annually in the U.S by monopole tower wind turbines was 234,000. The authors acknowledged the larger number reported by Smallwood, but noted that Smallwood's meta-analysis did not distinguish between types of wind turbine towers. The monopole towers use
caption: Arctic terns and a wind turbine at the Eider Barrage in Germany.
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