Wind Power Really Does Not Kill a lot of Birds, if you compare it to the Top Causes of Bird Deaths.

Wind Power Results In Very Few Bird Deaths Overall

Wind power critics sometimes try to say that this form of clean, renewable energy is bogus because a number of bird deaths result each year from collisions with wind turbines and towers. What they fail to mention is the context, so they leave out certain very key facts.

From article, (Wind power critics sometimes try to say that this form of clean, renewable energy is bogus because a number of bird deaths result each year from collisions with wind turbines and towers.

What they fail to mention is the context, so they leave out certain very key facts.

The number of birds killed by wind turbines is relatively tiny. “Collisions with wind turbines account for about one-tenth of a percent of all ‘unnatural’ bird deaths in the United States each year. And of all bird deaths, 30 percent are due to natural causes, like baby birdsfalling from nests,” according to AWEA.

Billions of birds are killed each year by domestic cats. Yes, that’s billions with a b. Collisions with communications towers kill about 6.5 million birds each year; this is about 18 times more than wind power technology. Electrocutions kill about 5.4 million.

Furthermore, nuclear power plants and fossil-fuel plants kill far more birds than wind power. “Within the uncertainties of the data used, the estimate means that wind farm-related avian fatalities equated to approximately 46,000 birds in the United States in 2009, but nuclear power plants killed about 460,000 and fossil-fueled power plants 24 million,” according to a paper published by Benjamin K. Sovacool titled “The Avian and Wildlife Costs of Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power.”

Cooling conventional power plants also kills billions of fish each year, in addition to birds. “The EPA says it also tracks other species of fish, and its overall figure for year-old-equivalent fish lost in power-plant cooling systems is 3.5 billion per year,” according to anAssociated Press article in 2008.

 Back to other sources of bird deaths, in addition to deaths caused by domestic cats, collisions with glass in buildings is a top cause. “Bird mortality from window collisions in the US is estimated to be between 365 million to 988 million birds annually.” If we compare the top end of the researchers’ estimate for wind power bird deaths, which is 328,000 per year, with the peak from the Fish and Wildlife Service for building collisions, which is 988 million, we see that building collisions result in well over 2,000 times more bird deaths.)

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