Bats are paying the ultimate price for our wind turbine obsession |
The 11,000 wind turbines in the UK are not only an eyesore, they are also a killer. Their blades can spin deceptively fast at up to 186 miles per hour. Even if most are bridled at 56 miles per hour for structural reasons, they still manage to kill creatures which fly into their paths. Birds of prey and swifts are particularly vulnerable, as are songbirds, many of which are on ornithological ‘red lists’. The scale of the slaughter of bats is monumental: 200,000 annually in Germany, 500,000 in the USA and 30,000 in the UK, according to a French study into the impact of wind turbines on bats by the Museum national d’histoire naturelle, recently reported in Le Monde. Millions of bats are killed annually by wind turbines, according to the UN Environment programme.
Labour’s aim to increase dramatically turbine numbers in the North Sea over the coming years spells danger for seabirds, not to mention the threat to bats from the growing number of onshore windfarms. Though the planned Berwick Bank mega windfarm project will be........