Bats at risk from offshore wind farms, experts say
Experts studying bats in Taiwan are petitioning the government to conduct ecological surveys on how their natural habitats have been affected by the development of offshore wind farms.
The petition was launched after guidelines governing the ecological surveys conducted for offshore wind turbine farms — compiled by the Environmental Protection Administration and the Ocean Conservation Administration — failed to include surveys of bats.
Formosan Golden Bats’ Home director Cheng Heng-chia (å¼µæ’嘉) yesterday said that many overseas studies showed that onshore wind turbines have negative effects on birds, and the effects on bats are no smaller than those on birds.
In the US, millions of bats are estimated to have been killed by wind turbines each year, Cheng said.
Similar studies in Taiwan around onshore wind turbines have also found that more than 10,000 bats die each year and the carcasses of bats at wind farms nationwide exceed those of birds, he said.
Some of the bats killed by wind turbines are rarely seen in Taiwan, including serotine bats, common noctules, frosted bats and Hodgson’s bats, studies have found.
“The scale of the government’s development of offshore wind energy is far greater than that of onshore wind energy, and areas affected by the blades of offshore wind farms are larger than those of onshore wind farms. All these factors gradually elevate the risks of bats being killed by wind turbines,” Cheng said
Germany in 2013 started including bats in its ecological surveys of animals affected by wind farms, Cheng added.
Joe Huang (黃俊嘉), an expert at the Southeast Asian Bat Conservation and Research Unit, said that Taiwan lacks research on how offshore wind farms affect bats.
Research on bats’ activities in coastal areas is also limited, he added. Read More…
