My second edition is better:
Evan's comment might perhaps suggest that killing one bird per year is
unsustainable, if there are only 150 left. I'm guessing that if that was the
intention, there may be a logic lapse there. Individuals of all species die
from all sorts of causes. If a mortality rate predicted is around 1 bird per
annum, it has little to do with sustainability. Breeding occurs during the
intervening years. Apart from that I think it is impressive that someone could
reach such a calculation but surely it would be so hard to come up with a
figure like that and justify its accuracy to a useful level. If the species
gets rarer, by pure statistical chance, the mortality rate from wind farms in
areas where they hardly, if ever occur, would reduce to insignificance. Also
even if wind farms are the last straw to cause the extinction of the OBP, which
is unlikely, that does not make wind farms unsustainable (although it would
make the species unsustainable). Habitat loss and migration itself is sure to
be responsible for more deaths or stresses resulting in insufficient new
recruitment to the population. Surely it is habitat loss over decades that has
brought the species to the state where it is of conservation concern. As a
migrant, surely the species needs access to sufficient habitat on both sides of
Bass Straight to survive. As bird conservation lobbyists and conservationists
we are in a difficult situation in the wind farm issue.
Philip
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