This huge skandal has been known for decades, but it has been largely covered up and silenced! I have blogged about this skandal here before.
Where are the animal rights activists when you really need them? Paid off by the wind power lobby?
"For all of wind energy’s benefits [???], it causes problems for bats. The winged mammals seem to be unusually attracted to turbines, often loitering in the air next to them. As a result, millions of them slam into turbine blades every year and die, making turbines one of the top killers of the animals worldwide. But what exactly lures bats to turbines has remained a mystery. ..."
From the abstract:
"Wind energy’s rapid expansion has led to unintended consequences for wildlife, with migratory bats among the species most at risk. The behavioural mechanisms underlying collisions remain poorly understood, but one hypothesis is that bats are attracted to wind turbine structures. Vision is important to bat orientation and obstacle avoidance, yet it has been relatively understudied in the context of bat–turbine interactions. We hypothesize that light reflected off turbine surfaces could attract bats, acting as a sensory pollutant that may increase collision risk. To test whether reflective turbine surfaces elicit attraction, we flew 242 Lasiurus cinereus and 154 Lasionycteris noctivagans through Y-maze assays.
Bats were at least twice as likely to fly towards white turbine blade sections compared to less reflective black ones. This attraction intensified when the alternative exit was a dark, empty flyway, with 74% of L. cinereus and 97% of L. noctivagans flying towards the white turbine blade. These findings provide evidence that visual sensory pollutants could underlie bat–turbine interactions, and if so, wind turbines could be ecological traps."
Bats may mistake wind turbines for open sky, causing deadly collisions "Study may help explain why giant blades kill millions of the animals every year"
Most likely birds, not bats, but the issue is the same!
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