Posted Jan 31, 2013, 7:47 PM
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Sonoma Strong
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Cotati - The Hub of Sonoma County
Posts: 1,882
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Good news:
Quote:
Altamont Pass turbines kill fewer birds
photos: Michael Macor, The Chronicle
David R. Baker
Updated 8:24 pm, Monday, January 28, 2013
For decades, wind turbines straddling the Altamont Pass have generated clean electricity for California - at the cost of killing thousands of birds.
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But efforts to curb the bloodshed may be starting to work.
A new study suggests that the number of eagles, kestrels, burrowing owls and red-tailed hawks killed at Altamont each year has fallen roughly 50 percent since 2005. Reaching that level has been a long-term goal of local environmentalists and government officials, as well as the energy companies running turbines in the pass.
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The steps taken to protect birds at Altamont - shutting down turbines for several months in the winter, replacing small, fast-spinning older models with larger ones that are easier for birds to avoid - appear to be working. But Michael Lynes, executive director of the Golden Gate Audubon Society, said he wants to keep pushing the numbers lower.
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The study comes from consulting firm ICF International and examines bird deaths from 2005 to 2010. It focuses in particular on four species that were at the heart of the lawsuit - American kestrels, burrowing owls, golden eagles and red-tailed hawks.
At the start of the study period, deaths of all those species combined averaged 1,245 per year. By the end, the total had fallen to 625. (Those numbers represent three-year, rolling averages, considered useful because the number of birds in the pass can vary from one year to another for reasons that have nothing to do with turbines.)
Calculating mortality
The numbers aren't exact. Although researchers routinely search the wind farm for bird carcasses, they also take into account the possibility that scavengers will remove some of remains before they can be found. The report offers several different ways of calculating mortality rates, and while the results differ, all show a substantial decrease in deaths.
The decline is welcome news for wind power advocates, for whom Altamont's bird-killing reputation had been an embarrassment. They considered the site an aberration, much more deadly than other wind farms.
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At least 13 turbine models have been installed there over the years, and some proved particularly lethal to birds, as well as bats. Many older models had relatively small blades that spun fast in the wind.
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Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/business/artic...#ixzz2JaGmZfEH
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