Wind power & raptors

The connection between wind power and raptors is surprisingly complex. The rapid growth of wind power plants, or “farms”, offers renewable, low-pollution energy and is an important tool in combating the climate crisis. However, these wind farms kill an estimated 681,000 birds/year in the United States alone (2021 data).

Windpower generation creates a paradoxical challenge around the world – the best sites for windpower generation are also preferred by birds thanks to their steady wind. In addition, the peculiarities of their bodies, vision, and behavior make birds of prey more prone to colliding with wind turbine blades than are other birds.

For Eurasian Wildlife and Peoples, our concern centers on insufficiently-regulated siting and development of wind farms in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is situated in the Western Circum-Himalayan Migration Corridor (WCHMC), a key migratory route for birds. Birds of prey use this route to migrate from their nesting grounds in Russia and Central Asia, through the Himalayas, into their wintering grounds in the Indian subcontinent. The Steppe Eagle, Greater Spotted Eagle, and Eastern Imperial Eagle are among the birds of prey that migrate south through the WCHMC.

Kazakhstan’s southeastern Karatau Ridge and its narrow valley form a bottleneck along this flyway – our partners’ recent research shows that a significant percentage of these raptors pass this way in spring and fall. A decade of RRRCN research collected by studying eagles wearing small datalogger “backpacks” and painstaking visual observations show that 18% of tagged birds passing through Karatau fly at altitudes that are on a collision course with wind turbines at the Zhanatasskaya windpower farm. This 100-MW wind farm began operations in 2019, unfortunately without a meaningful or useful pre-implementation assessment of its impact on birds of prey and other large birds traveling this busy route.

Compounding the issue is the lack of effective legislation in Kazakhstan to regulate the siting of wind farms to minimize negative biodiversity impacts, especially for raptors. By contrast, the European Union and Canada have legislative guidelines, as does the United States, although in the US, pre-construction survey requirements for wind farms vary greatly from state to state.

Kazakhstan’s 2015 legislation related to planning wind farms does not regulate construction in key biodiversity areas, nor does it lay out requirements to reduce the negative impact of wind farms on birds. Our partners at BRCC are working step-by-step to improve the situation.

Outside Kazakhstan, several measures have been proposed and tested to reduce bird fatalities at wind farms, including reducing operation periods; i.e., temporarily suspending turbine operations during periods in which birds are most numerous and vulnerable, such as the spring and fall migration periods.

Other mitigation strategies include:

Siting – Identify ecosystems, habitats, species, and migration routes that would be adversely affected by wind facilities and limit or adapt windpower generation on the basis of that data.

Construction – Identify options for turbine design, turbine-layout configuration, and other aspects of construction and operation that minimize mortality and indirect loss and equip wind turbines with automatic acoustic and video collision warning systems.

Legislation – Improve legislation and implement policies that protect critical ecosystems, habitats, and species. Recommended measures include:

• Prohibit the design and construction of bladed-turbine wind farms with a horizontal axis of rotation greater than 50 KW in bird migration corridors and in high-risk areas for birds and bats.
• Prohibit the operation of wind power farms during spring and fall migrations in migratory bird corridors when they are equipped with horizontal axis-rotation turbines but not equipped with automatic shutdown technology.