Guidelines for bird monitoring at wind farms

MEDIA RELEASE

Guidelines for bird monitoring at wind farms
Johannesburg, 11 July 2011: BirdLife South Africa (BLSA), the largest bird conservation NGO in South
Africa, fully supports the responsible development of a renewable energy industry in South Africa.
Wind energy, although good for the environment, is not necessarily always good for birds. The most
important impacts of wind energy facilities (WEFs) on birds are displacement of sensitive species
from development areas, and mortality of susceptible species primarily through collisions with the
wind turbines. The nature and extent of these impacts is highly dependent on both site- and speciesspecific
factors and, as there is no detailed understanding of the possible effects of wind energy
developments on South African birds, conservationists are currently making use of the experiences
learnt from Europe and North America.

For all new wind energy facility developments, Environmental Impact Assessments are conducted,
and these include detailed bird impact assessments. The current bird assessments however do not
necessarily provide sufficient information for a decision to be made on the potential impact on birds.
BirdLife South Africa and its partner, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), have therefore produced
and released the “Best Practice Guidelines for Avian Monitoring and Impact Mitigation” to bring the
assessment in line with internationally accepted best practice.

BirdLife South Africa is confident that this proposed advanced monitoring will allow for informed
decisions, and allow wind farms to be developed at sites where impacts on birds are unlikely.
BirdLife South Africa encourages the wind energy industry to show that it respects not only the
carbon and economic benefits of wind farms, but also South Africa’s biodiversity. Globally, the
placement of renewable energy facilities are treated as important and BirdLife South Africa urges
the Department of Environmental Affairs and the financial sector to consider renewable applications
in South Africa no differently.

“The environmental community must work with the renewable energy industry in effectively
managing the environmental and social impacts of energy options to help it understand, avoid and
manage risks,” says Juan Marco Alvarez, Director of the IUCN Economy and Environmental
Governance Group. “We must ensure that renewable energy is developed in the right places,
meaning not just technically and financially, but also environmentally and socially.”
BirdLife South Africa and the EWT are proactively approaching the interaction between birds and
bats and wind energy through the development of the monitoring guidelines, an Avian Wind
Sensitivity Map and a “South African Good Practice Guidelines for Surveying Bats in Wind Farm
developments”.

“The avifaunal impact assessment must allow for the collection of adequate relevant field data to
support precautionary and strategic decision making,” says Dr Hanneline Smit, BirdLife South Africa’s
Conservation Manager. “This would translate into a baseline survey through pre-construction
monitoring over a minimum of 12 months, which is in line with international best practice,” adds Dr
Andrew Jenkins, representative of the Birds and Wind Energy Specialist Group (BAWESG).
Further, according to Jon Smallie from the Wildlife Energy Programme (WEP) of the EWT, site
alternatives must be considered as part of the pre-feasibility study, or desktop scoping process, for
all projects, particularly given that correct WEF positioning is widely agreed to be the primary means
of mitigating wind farm impacts on birds.

Smit and Smallie recently returned from a Wind Energy and Wildlife Impact Conference in
Trondheim, Norway. The conference dealt with the global and case-specific wind turbine/farm
impacts on birds and bats. Ernst Retief, BirdLife South Africa Gauteng Regional Conservation
Manager, presented the Avian Wind Sensitivity Map, developed by BirdLife South Africa and the
EWT, at the conference to showcase South Africa’s advanced approach of mitigation to minimise the
impact on our country’s birds. Attendance at the conference has strengthened BirdLife South
Africa’s approach to conform to international best practice and guide the wind industry in the
proposed development of wind energy facilities in South Africa.