The steady improvement in the water quality of the Great Lakes represents one of the real environmental success stories of recent decades.
But the giant inland seas’ ecosystem now faces a new threat, this one coming from advocates of renewable energy.
For over a decade, the Lake Erie Energy Development Corp. (LEEDCo), a non-profit, has sought approval for its Icebreaker Wind project that would eventually place hundreds of turbines with spinning blades on the lake.
It would be the first such facility on freshwater in the United States.
The project’s developers say the turbines will help combat climate change, but opponents point out that it is situated on a north-south flyway for millions of birds that migrate over Lake Erie every spring and fall.
Indeed, Lake Erie is a renowned passageway for migratory birds that migrate between nesting grounds in Canada and winter homes in Central and South America.
Conservationists are also worried about the threat that Icebreaker poses to waterfowl that flock to the lake in winter.
Ecosystem Already Declining
Andy Jones, chair of ornithology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History told the Washington Post (June 21) that Lake Erie has served as a stopover for as many as a quarter of North America’s red-breasted mergansers, a diving duck, and for delicate songbirds such as wood thrush and cerulean warbler.
He adds that the turbines wouldn’t just be a hazard, they would be an attraction. When the lake is frozen in winter, waterfowl would be drawn to the open water created by the heat-generating turbines, he explains.
The warbler population is already in trouble, he told the Post. “The whole ecosystem is declining. Let’s not add another threat on top of that.”
The Ohio Power Siting Board gave its approval for LEEDCo to go ahead with a pilot project that would allow six turbines in a north-northwest line to go up eight to ten miles offshore from Cleveland.
But as concerns mount over the project’s impact on birds, the board now says Icebreaker must conduct radar studies of bird and bat traffic over the proposed site before and after construction.
What’s more, it wants nighttime operations of the turbines suspended during the months-long migration period, unless and until studies conclude that is unnecessary.
Lawsuits against Icebreaker have already been filed, and one of the project’s developers, Norway’s Fred Olsen Renewables, is reported to be losing interest.
Meanwhile, Canadian officials are keeping a close eye on Icebreaker’s six-turbine pilot project. Canada banned wind turbines on Lake Ontario in 2011 pending the outcome of Icebreaker.
If Icebreaker ultimately gets the green light for hundreds of turbines on Lake Erie, Canadian authorities could allow hundreds more to go up on Lake Ontario.
Undercounting Wind Turbine Bat Fatalities
Birds are by no means the only avian creatures threatened by wind power.
In a new study, “Relating Bat Passage Rates to Wind Turbine Fatalities,” Shawn Smallwood and Douglas Bell report that the estimated 1.7 to 3.7 million bats killed by wind turbines in the U.S. each year could be greatly understating the carnage.
They note that many injured bats can recover enough to fly away from the collision sites before dying from their wounds.
Additionally, scavengers can quickly collect the injured and dead bats before humans and dogs can recover them. Smallwood and Bell estimate that the real kill rate may be 4 to 7 times than conventional estimates.
“At this rate, the extinction clock for North American bats may not be 50 years off, but only a decade or two away,” writes Kenneth Richard in notrickszone.com (June 25).
Read more at CFACT
So why are the Eco-Freaks not opposing wind turbines that are a hazard to all Migratory Birds protected by the Migratory Birds Protection Treaty why are they not lifting their fingers and demand all those Wind Turbines be removed Their just way too busy trying to stop a fake crisis of Global Warming/Climate Change
It has recently been discovered that birds flying in typical “V” formations do so for reason of energy conservation – stealing a little bit of lift from the wing vortices of the bird ahead – this behaviour was previously thought to be a line of sight issue.
This behaviour is typical for large migratory bird species – at risk from the presence of wind turbines.
Migratory birds travelling over water typically adjust their flight paths to fly over islands to gain the benefit of any thermal lift. An offshore wind turbine would look like a tree, obviously supported by an “island” – so they adjust their flight path – through the rotating turbine which in most cases are large enough to transect the typical flight altitude of migratory birds. Birds adopt these altitudes to best make use of thermals and conserve energy.
Raptors (eagles, hawks etc.) are opportunistic hunters and prefer to perch on some tall object and wait for some prey animal to enter their field of vision. The problem is they perceive tall structures such as windmills and solar towers as such ideal perches without realising the danger.
Raptors have even made wind turbine motor housings a nesting site – when raptors take off they do so into the wind – since the turbine is also automatically turned to face the wind, nesting and perching raptors tend to take off through the rotating blades.
https://savetheeagles.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/raptors-attracted-to-windfarms-2/
Large soaring raptors can be seen to “suicidally” circle wind turbines for no apparent reason. It is thought that the raptors pick up on the wingtip vortices and cruise around in them looking for a free “lift” as they do for thermals. Clearly seen in the video link below…..
Raptors wingtip feathers “sense” rising and falling airflow (like a glider’s variometer instrument informs the pilot) it does not consider the turbine to be the cause nor does the bird consider it in any way dangerous. It is simply responding to millions of years of evolution dancing through the turbulence.
The above behaviour patterns explain the disproportionate mortality for larger birds, particularly large soaring birds like raptors and large migratory species.
A great number of wind and solar projects have in fact been built in “Bio-diversity” and “Wildlife Sanctuary’s” – where no building is normally allowed – see the following link :-
https://climatechangedispatch.com/green-energy-threatens-wildlife-habitats/
It looks like environmentalists are starting to wake up to the fact that wind and solar are in no way “Eco-Friendly” !
Wind power is endangering species that have survived numerous ice ages, sea level changes etc – Global Warming poses no threat to them – Wind Turbines are positively lethal – refer the following link that suggest that environmentalists are in a state of denial over this inconvenient truth.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8807761/wind-farms-vs-wildlife/
This by an Oxford professor of ornithology and an expert on species extinction.
“… it wants nighttime operations of the turbines suspended during the months-long migration period …”
The other ‘green’ producer – solar – doesn’t do too well at night. If the wind mills are shut down, then coal or natural gas plants have to meet 100% of the load. These folks have tunnel vision – all they can see is their own vision of ‘paradise’.
The Bar Tailed Godwitt a Shorebird related to Plovers and Sandpipers migrate non stop from Alaska to New Zealand yes they spend their summer with the Ptarmigan and their winters with the Kiwis