![]() Something to bear in mind is that most bats killed at wind farm are migratory species. I hope this answers your question and thank you for commenting! I’m not exactly sure how bats identify “danger”, but my guess is that the mental image ( this article uses how we see things using our eyes and light as an analogy, but seismic sense from Avatar the Last Airbender is kind of how I imagine it) they form of the wind turbines could be very similar to that of trees which is why they don’t think that turbines are dangerous. This study found out that using ultrasound could help to reduce bat fatalities in wind farms, so I would say that rather than the noise level, it is the high frequency or pitch of the noise that could impair bat judgement. Since echolocation involves the use of ultrasounds, it is possible that it could cause them to avoid the turbine blades. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find out if systematic noise patterns affect echolocation, but I did find out that rather than the loud sounds, it could be the very high pitched sounds aka ultrasounds that could cause some bats to avoid wind turbines. I love that analogy and yes, I do think that we should find ways to change the wind turbines or maybe choosing wind farm locations more carefully so that there is less harm to animals. Do you think this might jeopardise a bat’s judgement as to whether the swinging blades are safe or dangerous, considering that bats aren’t really that affected by loud sounds (2)? Hope to hear your opinion on this one! As far as I know, modern turbines do not produce overly loud sounds but have characteristically systematic patterns (1). I was just curious, apart from the tree-resembling qualities and barotrauma, would the noise levels of a turbine somewhat affect bats, be it in a good way or bad way. Really intriguing post! I guess rather than attracting ‘moth to the flame’, it is ‘bat to the turbine’ in this case! Perhaps we have to devise or improvise on the designs of the turbine to make them less ‘fatal?’ to the bats. I hope this post has highlighted the dangers that wind farms pose to bats and that maybe someone will be able to figure out a better solution to prevent more bats from dying without affecting our green energy generation. I wonder if building a sort of fence/ cage around a turbine could prevent bats from being near to the turbines without affecting wind collected? Or would bats just fly into the cage and get hurt anyway if they cannot detect the cage? Hopefully, researchers will be able to figure out exactly why bats are attracted to wind turbines and find a way to stop it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find solutions to prevent bats from flying near the blades so this is a big problem. The anatomy of bats causes them to be extra vulnerable to the changes in air pressure, which results in barotrauma being responsible for many bat deaths in wind farms. The other reason for bat fatalities is barotrauma, where the bats can get serious internal injuries, especially in their respiratory system, if they fly near the spinning turbine blades. After all, energy which harms animals isn’t clean. On the other hand, since bats are an important part of ecosystems, we shouldn’t treat their deaths at the hands (blades?) of wind turbines lightly. However, that could be a problem if we want to get as much use of the wind as possible, as lower cut-in speeds would help to increase the clean energy that we could get. Turbine blades can also spin even if they aren’t generating energy, so it was found fewer bats died if the blades could be prevented from rotating at very low wind speeds. This means that bats are more likely to hit the turbines at low wind speed, so raising the speed at which turbines start generating electricity could help to reduce the number of bat deaths. This study found that bats tend are less likely to move towards wind turbines if the blades are spinning quickly and if the wind speed is high. A large proportion of bats which roost in trees and migrate were found dead in wind farms, which supports this hypothesis. Bats which roost in trees could be more at risk in wind farms.īats are found to move towards wind turbines and one possible reason is that turbines look kind of like trees. ![]()
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