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For the most part, flying animals are familiar with their aerial habitat, including the obstacles that they might encounter when using it. However, humans have invented new things that flying animals don’t recognize as obstacles because they didn’t evolve with them present, like buildings with clear glass windows or wind turbines. 

It might not be obvious, but wind is a resource we share with wildlife. Much like a raptor harnesses wind energy in updrafts to gain altitude in flight, we harness the energy in wind to create electricity.

Wind energy production is expanding across the U.S. meeting the growing need for renewable energy. Presently, there are more than 73,000 turbines in 43 states and territories, most of which are on land. But wind farming is also expanding into the offshore environment with wind facilities present in the Atlantic and planned in the Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Maine, and the Great Lakes.

As wind energy production expands, so too do the potential impacts on wildlife. Flying wildlife often don’t survive an encounter with a wind turbine blade, but there are more subtle negative impacts as well, like displacement when animals avoid an area they used to inhabit.

Understandably, scientists and natural resource managers are interested in finding ways to mitigate wildlife-wind turbine interactions. 

 including:

• Can scientists help design wind turbines or operational protocols of wind turbines that deter wildlife or reduce wildlife collisions with wind turbines?
•  What are the expected number of wildlife fatalities into the future and which species are most susceptible?
• Do offshore wind facilities pose the same risk of collision to birds and bats that land-based facilities do?
• Do offshore wind facilities displace marine and aquatic species?
• What are the trade-offs between impacts to wildlife from wind facilities versus the benefits renewable energy sources provide to address climate change? 

To answer these questions, USGS scientists are hard at work on a number of projects and studies.

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For wildlife that are negatively impacted by wind facilities, scientists want to know the degree of the impact on their populations. To help put the scale of negative impact into context, the North American Bat Monitoring Program, or NABat, tracks bat populations across North America. Scientists working with the Renewables- Wildlife Solutions Initiative are developing science-based tools to understand population-level and cumulative impacts for wildlife affected by renewable energy facilities. 

With the scale of negative impacts put into context, wildlife managers can prioritize mitigation and protection for the most impacted species and make decisions about how to address bird and bat mortalities from wind facilities. 

With the effects of climate change becoming increasingly more severe, the need for renewable energy will continue to grow. Although wind energy production can negatively impact wildlife, it is possible to limit those impacts. Dedicated USGS aeroecologists, wildlife biologists and other scientists are committed to producing the science and decision-making tools that are needed to limit those impacts.