GLOBAL WARMING NEWS |
“The choice is not between wind power and unspoiled nature. The choice is between wind power and the destruction of the world’s biology.” – Bill McKibben
Confessions of a Bat Lover: Wind farms can help save America’s bat populations from a huge crash, probable mass extinctions
By MIKE TIDWELL First the good news: A year ago, a very small but very vocal group of wind power critics were repeatedly asserting that proposed wind farms in western Maryland and across Appalachia would put “millions” of migratory birds at risk for collision deaths. Thankfully, a growing body of scientific data continues to show that these projections have been fantastically untrue. It now appears that properly sited wind farms will have zero – that’s right, zero – impact on resident and migratory bird populations across Appalachia. (Visit www.nationalwind.org/publications/avian.htm for national and regional statistics). But now legitimate concerns have been raised about a new and unexpected development at some Appalachian wind farms: bat fatalities. But before critics of wind power plunge forward with new assertions about a coming holocaust for these friendly flying mammals, it’s important to get the story straight from the start this time. There is growing optimism among environmentalists and wind industry officials that the phenomenon of bat fatalities at wind farms may soon be fully understood and can be quickly and successfully addressed using readily feasible technological responses. The point I want to make is this: The lives of all of us – bats, humans, all living creatures – are at dramatic risk in the coming decades from the rising crisis of global warming. The effects of this warming are already painfully present in our region, from sea-level rise on the Chesapeake Bay to the spread of infectious diseases to the near-total destruction of the maple syrup industry in Maryland and Virginia (www.chesapeakeclimate.org). Many of you may have seen a front page story in the Washington Post on January 1st about the unexpected bat fatalities at three Appalachian wind farms, including the “Mountaineer” wind farm in Tucker County, West Virginia, closest to D.C. While bird mortality at this wind farm has been extremely low – just 200 or so avian deaths in 2003 from all 44 wind mills combined -- bat fatalities appear to be a full magnitude higher. Thankfully, no endangered bats have been killed and there’s no data showing that the impacts from existing or proposed wind farms will cause biologically significant impacts on resident or migratory bat populations. But this issue must be addressed. Bats are not only great biological wonders of the world, they serve ecosystems and human communities by consuming insects harmful to forests, human health and agriculture. Frankly, researchers are not quite sure why the bats are hitting the windmills. Their echo-location capacity appears to shut down at certain times around these clean-energy structures. But the good news is that the collisions appear to be “episodic” in nature, meaning they happen in bursts. At the Mountaineer farm, for example, there are very few fatalities for much of the year, but the period from July-September brings spikes in bat collisions within very narrow windows of time. These spikes, moreover, appear to happen just before and after storms and on really warm nights when there’s little wind. Optimism about solutions The fact that the moments of greatest risk seem clearly related to predictable weather changes is a source of growing optimism. Wind farms, for example, could choose to shut down completely prior to potential spikes associated with summer storms or warm, low-wind evenings. Also, the modern windmill blades can be “feathered,” i.e. the blades turned sideways so that their rotation is slowed dramatically, a procedure which some initial observations show might greatly reduce bat strikes. There’s also the possibility of using some sort of “acoustic deterrence” to warn bats away from the windmills. Researchers say it might be possible to broadcast a low-frequency sound inaudible to most humans – perhaps in the 15 kilohertz range -- from each windmill, triggering the bats’ echo-location sensors and steering them away. Or perhaps a combination of these techniques – periodic windmill cessation with simultaneous acoustic deterrence – could dramatically reduce bat mortality, if not virtually eliminate it. There’s absolutely no reason, in other words, to declare clean-energy wind power a new menace to the environment, as a very few critics continue to do. We Americans are an industrious, problem-solving people. We can fix things and make good things happen when we make up our minds. Meanwhile, we desperately need clean energy. We need it in a hurry. We need it on a big scale. So the idea that we cannot quickly address this unexpected bat challenge in Appalachia to the satisfaction of both man and nature just doesn’t fit reality or history’s inexorable push toward clean, sustainable energy systems. So here’s my prediction: five years from now wind farms will be a familiar, reassuring sight in several parts of Appalachia and across the farmlands of Maryland’s Eastern Shore and perhaps even out in the Atlantic Ocean like the current offshore projects in Denmark, Germany, England and Ireland. And bat and bird fatalities? They’ll be something we no longer talk about. Why? Because the numbers will be so remarkably small and the environmental benefits of wind power so dramatically large. The real threat to bats: coal and global warming In the last dozen years alone, 490,000 acres of prime Appalachian mountain forest land has been turned into an utter moonscape by a process called “mountaintop removal” to mine coal. It used to be that humans took the coal out of the mountains. Now we simply take the mountains off the coal, with truly unspeakable results. This is happening in Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, but especially in nearby West Virginia. How many Appalachian bats were exterminated in the last dozen years as part of this process? Who knows? But almost surely it’s in the millions. And at least 244 species of birds have been affected. Appalachian children and entire human communities are dying too. (See www.crmw.net). Unbelievably, thanks to regulatory help from the Bush Administration, another 326,000 acres of prime Appalachian land are scheduled for mountaintop removal in the next eight years. That makes a total area of land from 1992-2012 equivalent to blowing up and leveling virtually the entire panhandle of western Maryland! That’s right: Garrett County completely gone. Allegany County turned into a desolate wasteland. Half of Washington County made into a parking lot. It truly strains credibility to think that some wind critics believe a few hundred windmills in western Maryland pose a threat on par with turning the equivalent of ALL of western Maryland into a desolate moonscape. Wind or coal: It’s time to choose Some critics say wind power actually does nothing to alter coal consumption. This is absolutely, totally false. There is already firm evidence that existing wind farms in Pennsylvania and West Virginia are reducing the amount of coal that would otherwise be burned to power our regional grid. But more importantly, the Maryland Public Service Commission projects that the state will need a staggering 16 thousand megawatts of new electricity capacity by 2010. Virginia will need about the same. Where is this electricity going to come from? Natural gas? Hardly. Natural gas prices are so high that new gas-fired power plants are no longer being built and there’s little chance this will change for several years. I think Appalachia’s bats deserve better. I think our children deserve better. It’s abundantly clear to me and growing number of Americans that the future of our world truly lies in clean, renewable wind power. And the faster we get there, the better. Mike Tidwell is director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. He can be reached at mwtidwell@aol.com or 301-920-1633. To learn more about CCAN and how you can become a supporter visit www.chesapeakeclimate.org. |