Photo: Houston Zoo
Making it easier for Whooping Cranes
to avoid wind turbines when migrating
A new study offers insight into how this endangered bird is faring on landscape increasingly dotted with wind turbines. Ecological Applications, reports that Whooping Cranes migrating through the U.S. great plains avoid "rest-stop" sites that are within 5 km of wind-energy infrastructure. Avoiding wine turbines can decrease collision mortality, but can also make it more difficult for flocks to find safe and suitable rest and refueling sites. The study's insights could improve siting decisions as wind energy usage expands. The study tracked cranes migrating across the great plains, a region that is a mosaic of croplands, grasslands and wetlands, where there has been rapid proliferation of wind energy infrastructure in recent years. In 2010, there were 2,215 wind towers in the Whooping Crane migration corridor focussed upon, and by 2016, when the study ended, there were 7,622 wind towers in the same area. Biologists found that Whooping Cranes migrating across the study area in 2010 and 2016 were 20 times more likely to select "rest stops" at least 5km away from wind turbines than those sites closer to turbines. The study estimated 5% of high-quality stopover habitat in the study area was affected by wind towers. Siting wind infrastructure outside of the cranes' migration corridor would reduce the risk of further habitat loss not only for Whooping Cranes, but also millions of other birds using the same habitat.
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BarrytheBirder
