Subject: Avian Assessment/Stateline Wind (fwd)
Date: Oct 2 05:32:04 2003
From: Devorah A. N. Bennu - nyneve at amnh.org



hello tweets,

i thought you would be interested to know the results from
a large wind power project that is being carried out at the
washington-oregon border.

regards,

Devorah A. N. Bennu, PhD
email:nyneve at amnh.org or nyneve at myUW.net
work page http://research.amnh.org/ornithology/personnel/bennu.htm
personal pages http://research.amnh.org/users/nyneve/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 08:40:57 -0500
From: Tom Gray <tomgray at igc.org>

Preliminary results from avian and bat monitoring studies at
Stateline Wind Energy Center, a large wind project located
on the Washington-Oregon border, are covered in an energy
trade newsletter at:

http://www.newsdata.com/enernet/conweb/index.html

The newsletter also includes a link to the full study report.

Some highlights:

- Estimated rate of bird fatalities is 1.7 per turbine annually.

- 106 bird, 54 bat deaths documented on "standard search
plots." Fatality estimates extrapolated. Estimates may be
high, "as they include many birds with an undetermined
cause of death."

- Horned larks amounted to 43% of bird fatalities.

- "No threatened, endangered or candidate bird or bat species
--at the federal or state levels--were discovered as casualties
of the world's largest land-based wind farm."

- More than 2,200 searches conducted at 41 plots "effectively
consisting of 146 total turbines." Wind farm has 399 turbines.
Intact and scavenged carcasses counted, along with findings
of 10 or more feathers in one spot. Statistical methods used
to gauge searcher efficiency and carcass removal rates.

Tom Gray
American Wind Energy Association