It is undoubtedly true that wind farms kill both birds and bats - the issue
seems to be the numbers that are killed.
For birds it seems to me that the numbers are probably small in comparison
to the huge numbers that die every year by colliding with cars, buildings,
powerlines, shotgun pellets etc. Of course individual species in certain
areas may suffer disproportionately. Bats seem less likely to suffer many of
these other fates because of their echo-location, although as others have
indicated fruit bats (which of course do not echo locate) are often seen on
power lines in the north.
The big unknown of course is climate change and how much influence a wind
farm will have on this - most people probably agree that burning fossil
fuels is likely to increase the average temperature and that this will
result in increased death rates for many species. A wind farm in theory
reduces the amount of greenhouse gases (slightly) and thus should reduce the
increase in average temperature (slightly) and thus help to save some
species - but is this more or less than will be killed by the windfarm??????
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