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Raptors--a class that includes hawks, falcons, and eagles--are daytime predatory birds. They migrate in windy areas where, for obvious reasons, wind turbines are best sited.
Siting these wind turbines so that they pose the least possible threat to migrating raptors is a difficult, but worthwhile, challenge. The potential of wind power is being evaluated in states like Montana where the wind blows almost continuously and hard in the eastern part of the state, where raptor species like the Ferruginous, Swainson’s and Red-tailed Hawks and Prairie Falcons and Golden Eagles migrate and nest.
During their migrations raptors can either fly high in huge kettles or clusters, or fly in at low altitudes, vulnerable to wind turbines.
Raptors have the tendency to fly against the wind following updrafts right into the sites of wind turbines.
These turbines are already placed where they can, and do, negatively affect raptors and other forms of wildlife. Wind energy is a viable form of alternative energy that is supported by the NRDC in its fight to curb the affects of global climate change on wildlife.
There do exist guidelines to put wind turbines in places so that the impact on raptors and other forms of wildlife is minimal to non-existent.
By heeding these guidelines and more responsibly siting wind turbines, we can protect raptors and all other birds, bats and butterflies as well as other animals as we we develop wind energy and place wind turbines to best mitigate and arrest global climate change.
[Photo from flickr user benefit of hindsight]
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