Alternative energy and wildlife conservation are at cross–purposes once again.
A wind–energy project capable of producing 250,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually is in the works in northeastern North Carolina. Unfortunately, it would be built in an Important Bird Area (IBA) and in the path of thousands of tundra swans and other migratory waterfowl that overwinter at Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.
Pantego Wind Energy Inc. plans to install 49 wind turbines on a site two miles from Pocosin Lakes Refuge and 15 miles from Mattamuskeet Refuge. The company has applied for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity from the N.C. Utilities Commission, which held hearings late last year, one of a limited number of opportunities for public review/comment.
In a Dec. 6, 2011, letter to the commission, Pocosin Lakes Refuge manager Howard Phillips recommended delaying its decision while the turbines’ likely impact on the swans can be studied. An average of 25,000 tundra swans roost at the refuge each winter and fly out to forage in surrounding fields.
Important Bird Area
The Audubon Society has designated about 60 percent of the Pantego site as an IBA, which calls into question its suitability for a wind project, Phillips says. His chief concerns are habitat loss if swans are scared away by the turbines and direct mortality if they aren’t.
“If the birds were suddenly to lose that patch of forage, would it have a devastating impact on the bird population? Probably not,” Phillips says. “But it would be yet another incremental loss. Death by a thousand cuts is the sort of thing I’m concerned about. At some point, we’ll hit a threshold, and the next loss will cause a reduction in the population.”
If swans don’t avoid the site, “they could be struck,” Phillips says. A turbine blade can turn in excess of 100 mph, and tundra swans—which can weigh 23 pounds with 5½–foot wingspans—“are large, not–very–maneuverable birds. If the birds fly in the same airspace as the turbines, especially at night (and we know they do fly at night), there’s a good chance of direct mortality.”
Whether enough swans would be killed to affect the population isn’t clear. The bottom line, Phillips says, is that the research isn’t there yet. “There’s some evidence that the impact of turbines is species–specific: They have a big impact on some species, not on others. We don’t know how tundra swans will react. All we can say is: Knowing what we know about these birds, we think it’s likely that this project will have a detrimental impact on the migratory bird resources we’re managing at the refuge.”
Phillips says the studies should span several years, in part because farmers rotate crops. “If you put a turbine down in a soybean field this year, it may not interfere much with the birds,” which prefer corn, winter wheat and other grains. “But next year, when there’s corn under that turbine, you’ll probably get a different result.”
Voluntary Guidelines
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar strongly supports the development of alternative energy sources, including wind, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has drafted guidelines to help companies develop them “in the right places,” Phillips says. The guidelines say IBAs are inappropriate for wind facilities—but the guidelines are voluntary.
The Service has no enforcement authority under either the guidelines or the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which “prohibits the ‘take’ of the birds but doesn’t prohibit the construction of a facility where birds are likely to be taken,” Phillips says. If birds are killed, however, the treaty allows the Service to investigate and refer any taking for prosecution.
Before it comes to that, though, Phillips recommends more deliberation: “These types of projects, especially in waterfowl concentration areas, are just so new that we simply don’t know how extensive the impacts on waterfowl might be.”
Alison Howard is a Virginia–based freelance writer and editor.
