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More birds killed by cats than wind turbines

More birds killed by cats than wind turbines

More birds killed by cats than wind turbines
mongabay.com
May 9, 2007

Note: NATURE’s article was based on flawed data. The journal will publish a correction.



Last week’s report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) on the environmental impact of wind farms warned that turbines may kill up to 40,000 birds per year, a toll that makes some question the clean energy source is worth the trouble.



Writing in the current issue of Nature, Emma Marris and Daemon Fairless find that while 40,000 bird deaths may seem high, it’s all relative. Domestic cats kill “hundreds of millions” of birds per year.



Marris and Fairless say that more significant concerns are over the number of birds of prey that are whacked each year: in California there are worries about the toll of the Altamont pass wind on golden eagles, while in Spain environmentalists report that 866 griffon vultures have been killed by wind-powered blades since 2000. Still the authors are unsure why wind power has such a bad reputation among the environmentally-inclined.



“For carbon-free power sources, wind turbines have an oddly bad reputation among conservationists,” the write.



CITATION: Emma Marris & Daemon Fairless (2007). Wind farms’ deadly reputation hard to shift. Nature Volume 447 Number 7141.




Comment from Dan Boone



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