Raptors and songbirds are negatively affected.
The Keweenaw Ridge is not an Appropriate Location
Why place 575-foot tall wind turbines along the Keweenaw Ridge, that is part of one the major Midwest Spring Migration Routes for raptors and home to many songbirds?
Placement of any technological infrastructure is all about context. That is, some locations are just not appropriate for locating large scale industrial wind turbines.
“Birds and wind turbines share an affinity for windy mountain ridgelines, putting them on a potential collision course…. ”
“The United States is now the world’s leading producer of wind energy, with tens of thousands of wind turbines in operation and many more planned. As a result, bird mortality from collisions is escalating every year, especially in areas where turbines and their associated power lines and towers have been poorly sited from the perspective of bird conservation”
Importantly, unlike what the wind industry wants you to believe, the Audubon Society is not supportive of all industrial wind turbine projects. In fact, they state that “wind power facilities can harm birds through direct collisions with turbines and other structures, including power lines. Wind power facilities can also degrade or destroy habitat, cause disturbance and displacement, and disrupt important ecological links. Placing wind projects in the path of migratory routes makes this problem worse, especially for larger turbine blades that may reach up into the average flight zone of birds that migrate at night.”
Audubon has also “stood in strong opposition to a 2013 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule that offered 30-year permits for wind farms to kill and injure Bald and Golden Eagles. A federal judge later overturned this rule, and USFWS dropped its appeal in 2016. (They) are also opposed to any interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act that would remove penalties for incidental take, including from collisions with wind power or associated infrastructure”. https://www.audubon.org/news/wind-power-and-birds The tip of Keweenaw has also been recognized as a Michigan Important Bird Area by Audubon, Detroit Audubon Society, Kalamazoo Nature Center, and Michigan Audubon Society. https://www.audubon.org/bird/iba/michigan
The Keweenaw Ridge: A Major Bird Highway
“Nearly 30,000 wind turbines have already been installed within areas identified as being of high importance to federally protected birds in the United States, with 50,000 more planned for construction in similar areas..” https://abcbirds.org/article/wind-turbines-being-installed-in-sensitive-bird-habitat-on-massive-scale/
“Wind turbines may now be among the fastest-growing human-caused threats to our nation's birds” American Bird Conservancy https://abcbirds.org/article/wind-turbines-being-installed-in-sensitive-bird-habitat-on-massive-scale/
One place of high importance to birds is the Keweenaw Ridge. The Keweenaw Ridge is a bird highway, being part of one of several major Midwest spring migration route for raptors (e.g., hawks and eagles) and home to many songbirds. Songbirds love the forested areas along the Keweenaw Ridge and raptors travel long distances by soaring along ridges, using the upward thermal currents generated along mountain ridge. Raptors also soar at a height that places them in a direct collision course with industrial wind turbines.
There are also many, many waterfowl that migrate and reside in our area. For example, Manitou island is located 3 miles west of Copper Harbor. In October 2020, over 13,000 waterbirds were counted in one day (Copper Country Audubon Newsletter, 28(1), March/April, 2021). How will industrial wind turbines impact waterbirds living in, and migrating through, our area? We just don’t know.
The Keweenaw Ridge is in fact a migrating bird highway that ends up on Brockway Mountain https://www.copperharbor.org/portfolio/spectacular-bird-migration/ https://www.coppercountryaudubon.org/brockway-mountain http://www.thekbrg.org/plan-your-visit/
Close up of Spring Raptor Migration Routes in the Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2006). Note that more recent raptor counts in the UP now are reported in the tens of thousands).
To give you an idea of the number of raptors (e.g., hawks, eagles) that migrate up and down the Keweenaw Ridge towards (and from) Brockway Mountain, at Brockway Mountain, 18 different raptor species have been observed on Brockway Mountain during the spring migration. The period of spring migration occurs over a long period of time, from March into early July.
And it is not a few hundred raptors that are observed. In fact, the number of raptors counted on Brockway Mountain during the spring migration has been as high as 25,765 (http://www.thekbrg.org/historical-count-totals/). Of these totals, there are many bald eagle and golden eagles that move along the Keweenaw Ridge towards Brockway Mountain. In fact, there has been as many as 1,658 bald eagles and 81 golden eagles counted on Brockway Mountain during the spring migration. https://hawkcount.org/siteinfo.php?rsite=699
Especially vulnerable to industrial wind turbines are eagles. “The Bald Eagle has been the national emblem of the United States since 1782 and a spiritual symbol for native people for far longer than that.” https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Bald_Eagle/overview Golden eagles are more common in the western U.S. and “eastern golden eagles are "among the rarest species out there," ….. West of the Mississippi River their population is estimated at 20,000; east of the river, estimates vary from 1,500 to 3,000.” https://www.courant.com/business/hc-xpm-2012-04-07-hc-golden-eagle-wind-farms-20120404-story.html
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service states that “Eagles appear to be particularly susceptible (to wind turbines). Large numbers of golden eagles have been killed by wind turbines in the western states. However, bald eagles have also been killed, although not in the numbers seen in the West. The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (Eagle Act) prohibits the take, possession, sale, offer to sell, purchase or barter, transport, export or import, of any bald or golden eagle, alive or dead, including any part, nest or egg, unless allowed by permit.” https://www.fws.gov/midwest/wind/wildlifeimpacts/index.html
So why should Circle Power and other wind developers be provided “permits” to kill migrating raptors and songbirds, including rare ones like the eastern Golden Eagle, when we know placement of industrial turbines along the Keweenaw Ridge will make the ridge a major bird killing highway?.
Don’t let the Wind Industry Under Count and Discredit the Killing of Birds (and bats)
The wind industry likes to refer to studies that state bird deaths from industrial wind turbines are small compared to building collisions and outdoor cats. Don’t allow them to minimize the number of birds killed. First, do we discount a type of cancer as not important if it ranks #3 or #4 in number of annual deaths? The answer is no, cancer deaths are cumulative, just like bird deaths are.
Also, the wind industry likes to site a 2012 study on the number of birds killed by turbines. Since that study, “vastly more turbines are in operation” and “if the U.S. produces 35 percent of electrical production from wind, “as new Department of Energy projections suggest, up to 5 million birds could be killed annually. These estimates do not include birds that are killed by collisions with associated power lines and towers, which could be in the hundreds of thousands or even millions annually.” https://abcbirds.org/program/wind-energy-and-birds/
Furthermore, regarding the information in the 2012 study misrepresented by the wind industry, bird kills from wind turbines are much higher in forested areas (like our area and along the Keweenaw Ridge) than in the Plains. Mortality rates also differ among regions, with turbine mortality lowest in the Great Plains where there are no forests and mountains. Mortality is also greatest for soaring raptors (as was mentioned above) and local mortality rates are most likely substantially higher along or near migratory routes, such as along ridgelines.
“At the end of the day, cumulative impacts are what truly matter most. Put another way, wind energy development is but one of many sources of bird mortality, and these are additive”
Mortality Rates are Under-Estimated.
Finally, bird mortality rates reported by the industry are under-estimated because smaller birds that drop dead quickly decompose and are scavenged by mammals before they are counted.
“The most common procedure is for bird carcass searches to take place every 1–2 weeks within a 50–100 m radius around turbines or under power lines in the monitored wind farms.” (Farfán et al., 2017). Removal of carrion is also quick and widespread in habitats like ours. In fact, a recent study showed most of the study birds had disappeared by the third and fourteenth day (depending on the species) and less than than half of the carcasses were found < 100 m from where they were deposited (Farfán et al., Testing for errors in estimating bird mortality rates at wind farms and power lines. Bird Conservation International, 27(3), 431-439, 2017).
Furthermore, the above peer-reviewed research article is new from 2020. It is available for the public to read online. Some key points from it.
Mortality limits used in wind energy impact assessment underestimate impacts of industrial wind turbines on bird populations.
Rather than having a negligible effect, we found that a 1% additional mortality in post fledging cohorts of our studied populations resulted in a 2%–24% decrease in the population level after 10 years.
Populations with low-density dependence are very sensitive to even a small increase in mortality
We should account from cumulative effects of multiple industrial wind turbine as bird populations encounter increasing number of wind turbines
Placement of any technological infrastructure is all about context. That is, some locations are just not appropriate for locating large scale industrial wind turbines.
[1] Falavigna, T. J., Pereira, D., Rippel, M. L., & Petry, M. V. (2020). Changes in bird species composition after a wind farm installation: A case study in South America. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 83, 106387.
[2] Loss, S. R., Will, T., & Marra, P. P. (2013). Estimates of bird collision mortality at wind facilities in the contiguous United States. Biological Conservation, 168, 201-209.