https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/01/10/wind-turbines-are-friendlier-to-birds-than-oil-and-gas-drilling

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Science and technology | Sharing the skies

Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling

Contrary to what opponents of wind farms fear

A flock of birds flies in front of wind turbines in California. 
image: Getty Images
Jan 10th 2024
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BIRDERS GET nervous when they see landscapes covered in wind
turbines. When the wind gets going, their blades can spin at well
over 200km per hour. It is easy to imagine careless birds getting
chopped to bits. Campaigners often point to the possibility when
opposing the building of new wind farms.

No one doubts that wind turbines do indeed kill at least some birds.
But a new analysis of American data, published in Environmental
Science & Technology, suggests the numbers are negligible, and have
little impact on bird populations.

Wind power has expanded dramatically in America over the past 20
years, from 2.6 gigawatts of installed capacity on land in 2000 to
122 gigawatts in 2020. Many studies have analysed the effects in
specific locations or on specific bird species. But few have looked
at the effects on wildlife at the population level. Enter Erik
Katovich, an economist at the University of Geneva. Dr Katovich made
use of the Christmas Bird Count, a citizen-science project run by the
National Audubon Society, an American non-profit outfit. Volunteers
count birds they spot over Christmas, and the society compiles the
numbers. Its records stretch back over a century.

Dr Katovich assumed, reasonably, that if wind turbines harmed bird
populations, then the numbers seen in the Christmas Bird Count would
drop in places where new turbines had been built. He combined bird
population and species maps with the locations and construction dates
of all wind turbines in the United States, with the exceptions of
Alaska and Hawaii, between 2000 and 2020. He found that building
turbines had no discernible effect on bird populations. That
reassuring finding held even when he looked specifically at large
birds like hawks, vultures and eagles that many people believe are
particularly vulnerable to being struck.

But Dr Katovich did not confine his analysis to wind power alone. He
also examined oil-and-gas extraction. Like wind power, this has
boomed in America over the past couple of decades, with the rise of
shale gas produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of rocks.
Production rose from 37m cubic metres in 2007 to 740m cubic metres in
2020.

Comparing bird populations to the locations of new gas wells revealed
an average 15% drop in bird numbers when new wells were drilled,
probably due to a combination of noise, air pollution and the
disturbance of rivers and ponds that many birds rely upon. When
drilling happened in places designated by the National Audubon
Society as "important bird areas", bird numbers instead dropped by
25%. Such places are typically migration hubs, feeding grounds or
breeding locations.

Wind power, in other words, not only produces far less planet-heating
carbon dioxide and methane than do fossil fuels. It appears to be
significantly less damaging to wildlife, too. Yet that is not the
impression you would get from reading the news. Dr Katovich found 173
stories in major American news outlets reporting the supposed
negative effects that wind turbines had on birds in 2020, compared
with only 46 stories discussing the effects of oil-and-gas wells.
Wind turbines might look dramatic. But their effect on birds is not. 
#

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This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the
print edition under the headline "Sharing the skies"

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