Shooting Times & Country Magazine
The winds of change
Renewable energy is big news and the UK has ambitious plans for the next decade but how will it affect our wildlife, asks Mary Colwell
It is 7.30am in late November in the east of the Netherlands. A winter wind makes the grey, damp dawn somewhat desolate, especially as we are standing on the raised bank of the Rhine close to a city so affected by World War II, Arnhem.
The lonely cries of curlew on soft ground by a pool below are fitting mood music. They have flown in from their night roost in an industrial site a couple of kilometres away and are now feeding on mud and wet grass near to one of the city’s bridges. It is such a surprising location for birds of the wilderness; a more industrialurban landscape is hard to imagine. Housing developments sit cheek by jowl with metal hangars and steaming chimneys.
The thundering of a major highway competes with the waders’ soft whistles. To get to this feeding spot, the curlew have had to negotiate all this man-made complexity. Already on this cold, dark morning, a number of dog walkers, joggers and cyclists have passed by.
Ornithologist Dr Dick van Dorp pulls some papers out of his pocket and tries to keep them flat, but they flap defiantly. He points out the nighttime roosting site over the river and traces the route the curlew take to this tiny wetland.
“Right here there is an application to build four huge wind turbines, over
100m high,” he says. “The tips of the blades might reach 180m. They will be spaced directly across their flightpath. These birds are declining — surely this is a hazard they can do without. Do you think they will find a way around them? Will they fly over or below the blades? Will the noise scare them? They leave their roost before it is light, will they see them in the dark?”
There are so many questions and I can’t answer any of them. I know that in 2009 James Pearce-higgins from the British Trust for Ornithology looked into the effect on breeding waders of turbines built on unenclosed uplands in the UK, but this site couldn’t be more lowland and this is a wintering area, not a breeding site. Still, the results might be helpful. From an analysis of all the data available — which isn’t much — it seems that red grouse, snipe and curlew densities all declined on upland wind farms during the construction phase.
Strangely, densities of skylark and stonechat increased. Red grouse densities recovered after construction, but snipe and curlew did not. Curlew did not return to breed when the engineering works had finished, resulting in an “exclusion zone” of up to 500m from the turbines. Curlew, it seems from this study, are easily spooked by whirring windmills.
Who knows, though, what will happen in a city setting in the winter, especially if the proposed turbines are built with a height
equivalent to the local cathedral spire. As the cold light of dawn revealed the cityscape around us, it brought with it a new dimension to the difficulties faced by birds already under immense pressure.
Wind power in the UK is the biggest contributor to our renewable energy, supplying about a quarter of our usage, on a par with gas. Data on the effects of turbines on wildlife, though, is variable. Studies in Europe show that birds of prey can be particularly affected by onshore wind farms.
Wind turbines
In southern Spain, 252 wind turbines sited in an area used by different species of raptor and by large migrating species, killed 124 birds a year. In a different location, also in Spain, 256 turbines killed 30 griffin vultures and 12 common kestrels, which were feeding on mammals in the long grass beneath the turbines.
In Germany, white-tailed eagles and red kites both suffer fatalities. Kites are particularly susceptible if turbines are located in or near their breeding territory. In a recent study in Norway, up to eight white-tailed eagles die each year near to one wind farm on the coast, though, bizarrely, it was built directly in their flightpath to a nesting area.
Large raptors may be particularly susceptible to collisions as they spend most of their flight time soaring on or between thermals and cannot change direction easily. Their large bodies and wingspan adds to their vulnerability. However, at the other end of the scale, we now know that thousands of bats die each year around turbines, so body size is not the only issue.
The global shift to renewable energy has seen the number of wind turbines in the UK, both on and offshore, reach nearly 10,000, with more under development. The world’s largest offshore development in terms of output is off the coast of Cumbria and came on stream in 2018; 87 turbines, each around 190m tall, turn in the bracing Irish Sea. Electricity generated from offshore wind in the first quarter of 2018 increased by 53 per cent compared with the same period of 2017, partly due to this increased capacity.
Offshore turbines are undoubtedly a feature of our future and their effect on wildlife cannot be ignored. Our own plans, coupled with a push to increase European offshore wind power fortyfold by 2030, will inevitably change ocean ecosystems. Migrating wildlife does not recognise national boundaries and this drive for offshore wind energy will impact species shared by many of us. It is no longer a case of purely considering our own coastline.
In 2010, 40,000 pink-footed geese were monitored as they migrated from Greenland and Iceland to overwinter in Lincolnshire. Two wind farms are situated off the coast of Skegness and researchers found that most of the geese changed their course to avoid the turbines; those that stuck to the original migration route flew higher or lower to avoid the blades. It seems this species, at least, has adapted well to these strange constructions.
Marine sanctuaries
The base of the turbines under the sea provides safe anchorage for reefs and their associated fish species, and the no-go areas around the sites can also act as unintended marine sanctuaries. There will, however, inevitably be deaths from birds flying into turbines that we don’t know about, especially as many birds migrate at night. As there are
“In a recent study in Norway, up to eight white-tailed eagles die each year near to one wind farm on the coast”
plans to put gigantic turbines further out to sea where monitoring will be even more challenging, the effect on migrating wildlife is far from known.
That said, wind companies are developing ever more sophisticated technologies to deter birds and to detect strikes to help with research.
Another emerging aspect of offshore electricity generation is the electromagnetism produced by the cables running to shore, which are increasingly being shown to affect fish. It is fair to say we are largely in
uncharted territory as the gathering of data on the pros and cons of turbines is struggling to keep up with the pace of demand for renewable energy from the oceans.
Back in the gentler climes of lowland meadows, it is increasingly common to see fields turned into a glinting sea of solar panels. Very little data exists on the effect of these solar farms on wildlife, but where studies have been done it is generally positive. All the major non-governmental organisations welcome them as part of the renewable energy package, with the obvious proviso that they have to be situated in the right areas.
Solar farms
Compared with a field of rye grass, for example, solar farms can be wildlife havens. If — and at the moment it is an if — gaps are left between the arrays, field margins established, the land sown with species-rich mixes to attract pollinators, stocking density reduced alongside a light grazing regime and hedgerows planted, we all benefit. Butterflies and bumblebees can do well in species-rich solar farms, in numbers as well as in diversity of species. More birds forage in them too, most likely as a result of higher insect numbers and seeds.
It stands to reason, though, that solar panels have the potential to take away possible nesting sites for birds such as skylarks; in one study, skylark territories were much higher in control plots compared with a solar farm. The shiny surfaces of the panels can also be mistaken for water by insects, which lay their eggs on them, and bats and birds that drink on the wing see the glinting fields as lakes.
So little research has been done on this that it is hard to draw hard and fast conclusions. It is vital that we have more studies, especially as there are plans to put arrays of solar panels on brownfield sites to make “brightfield” sites, and to place them on pools and lakes, or “floatovoltaics”.
Enerɒy produced from solar farms is set to more than quadruple by 2030 but there are still questions to be answered.
England and Wales have an ambitious goal to provide 15 per cent of our energy from renewables by 2020 and Scotland has a target of 100 per cent, yet there are many unknowns. How will tidal barrages, for example, affect migrating fish? The famed plan for a Severn barrage was dismissed because of the perceived threat to thevast number of birds and fish that migrate up the channel and to the nesting seabirds on offshore islands. And what about the effect of growing biofuels to feed power stations? Now that is a whole new solar-powered kettle of fish.
What is certain is that climate change poses a far greater threat to all life than wind farms, barrages and solar panels. Reducing greenhouse gases is non-negotiable but how, where and on what scale we build renewable energy infrastructure is far from clear. Environmentalists are facing increasingly difficult and competing choices; do we prioritise energy production or wildlife conservation?
We have not faced this dilemma so starkly and on such a huge scale before, and the major conservation organisations often find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. As we show no signs of reducing our energy consumption nor altering our diet to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, producing clean energy is the only option. The point is, it may be cleaner but is it greener? At the moment we don’t know enough to be able to answer that question with any certainty.
“Compared with a field of rye grass, solar farms can be wildlife havens”