Birds in This Story
Bald Eagle
Golden Eagle
Thank you for your interest in how wind power affects birds. To learn more about Audubon's position on wind power, visit here. And for a more recent review of technological advances in the field, read this story.
***
In 2010 David Newstead, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field biologist, visited the Gulf shoreline of Laguna Madre, Texas, to survey skimmers, terns, and egrets. But it was a flock of 15 American White Pelicans that caught his eye, flying toward the nearby Peñascal wind farm. As he watched, a pelican at the flock’s tail end was swiped by a massive turbine blade and “literally ‘erased’ from the air,” Newstead wrote afterwards. This in itself isn’t surprising—wind turbines are notorious bird killers—but this specific farm was supposedly equipped with radar that could detect approaching birds and halt the blades. The radar had failed to do its job.
Wind turbines kill an estimated 140,000 to 328,000 birds each year in North America, making it the most threatening form of green energy. And yet, it’s also one of the most rapidly expanding energy industries: more than 49,000 individual wind turbines now exist across 39 states.
