Bats

 

11/1/11 - Study evaluates bat deaths near wind turbines

November 1, 2011 By Jill Sakai

 

(PhysOrg.com) -- It's something of an ecological murder mystery — countless numbers of bats are turning up dead near wind farms. But what is killing them?


A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison links on-the-ground sleuthing and clinical diagnostic techniques to sketch a better picture of how the are dying.

UW-Madison forest and wildlife ecology professor David Drake and former master's student Steven Grodsky have conducted environmental assessments, funded by the renewable energy company Invenergy and Wisconsin Focus on Energy, of the Forward Wind Energy Center in southeastern Wisconsin.

They recently partnered with Melissa Behr and others at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine and Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory to examine bat carcasses found near turbines at the site for clues to their demise.

The researchers had two primary suspects: blunt-force trauma from colliding with the turbine blades or poles, or barotrauma caused by flying through areas of different pressure created by spinning turbine blades.

Bats can easily navigate around stationary objects but the spinning turbines — where the blade tip can be moving about 175 miles per hour — pose a problem. With an echo-location range of about 60 feet, Drake says, "a bat would have roughly a quarter of a second to react to a turbine blade — not very long at all."

And although bats are sometimes able to avoid a direct hit and fly between the blades, the dramatic air pressure change surrounding a blade can cause serious internal injuries, akin to the bends that affect a human diver who ascends too quickly.

"Bats' anatomical structure is not strong enough to absorb the pressure differential experienced," explains Drake. "As they hit that pressure gradient, it can cause their internal organs to explode."

A much-publicized study in 2008 used field observations of dead bats to suggest that barotrauma might be the primary culprit. The Wisconsin-led group used veterinary diagnostic techniques, including x-rays, tissue analysis, and gross necropsy, to look for more definite signs.

They identified a large number and type of injuries, including many that were not externally visible. Nearly 75 percent of the bats had broken bones, mainly in the wings, and the majority had sustained a mix of skeletal fractures and soft-tissue damage such as ruptured organs, internal bleeding, and hernias. 

The researchers did not find specific patterns of injuries indicative of particular causes of death and concluded that both factors are at play. However, bats with few or no broken bones were more likely to be found closer to the turbines, suggesting that barotrauma felled these bats almost instantly.

"Barotrauma is a factor but it is not the clear-cut factor," Drake says. "There is certainly barotrauma going on, but there is definitely also blunt-force trauma from colliding with the turbine blade or possibly the monopole that holds the turbine up. Our results suggest bat deaths are the combination of both."

Roughly half of the bats examined also had middle and/or inner eardrum ruptures. Drake notes that such damage would not immediately be fatal but would disorient an animal, impair its ability to navigate and hunt, and likely hasten its demise. These non-instantaneous deaths may lead to an underestimation of the true extent of bat mortality near wind farms, he adds, since injured animals may be able to fly outside the search area before dying.

The issue is taking on greater urgency with the spread of white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease that has decimated bat populations in the northeastern and eastern U.S. Without a better understanding of bat ecology, Drake says it's hard to predict the combined impacts of turbines and disease.

"We still don't know exactly why bats are being killed — why the bats can't see such a large thing protruding from the landscape, or what is possibly attracting the bats," he says, "but now that we know direct causes of death we can start thinking about how to redesign turbine blades to have a smaller pressure differential or identify other cost-effective mitigation strategies that would minimize damage to bats."

More information: The study, "Investigating the causes of death for wind-turbine associated bat fatalities," is published in the October 2011 issue of the Journal of Mammalogy.

Provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison (news : web)

 

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-deaths-turbines.html

 

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Comment by Whetstone_Willy on April 19, 2012 at 5:10pm

Representative Dunphy,

As far as I can tell, it was a lot more Democrats than Republicans who worked behind the scenes to grease the skids for the wind industry - and that includes everything from Governor Baldacci's heinous wind law, to Kurt Adams' championing the Maine Power Reliability Project to Jon Hinck's unbridled wind cheerleading to David Littell's RGGI-mandated wind pushing, while charged as PUC commissioner to ensure fair rates!

The Republicans are not innocent because I believe they voted for the aforementioned wind law without even any debate. What was everyone thinking?  And then there is Co-chair Stacey Fitts on the Energy and Utilities Committee, the Republican (whose employer benefits from wind power) who has never seen a wind turbine he didn't like. Governor LePage got very close on lifting the cap on hydropower so it is those in his own party who disappoint us most. Our disappointment with many of the pro-wind Democrats, some true wind cheerleaders goes without saying.

But you are absolutely correct that the whole green cabal in this state is disproportionately rooted in the Demoratic party. What was Dale McCormick's housing department doing with carbon? Why are the UMS trustees blindly endorsing wind power and creating present debacles like the UMPI turbine or the UM's AWEC's offshore boondoggle?

The truth is many of us are Democrats and many Republicans. We try to avoid the trap of letting politics  begin dividing us. Wouldn't the wind industry love that? We try never to lose sight of the one thing and only thing that is why we have come together - that we have all had this great wind fraud steal from us, that which is ours.

Thank you and all your colleagues who have supported us.

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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