Les Jones

Science > Wind Turbines and Birds

Wind turbines are causing more hand-wringing among the hand-wringing class. Scott Burgess puts things in perspective:

UK conservationists are emulating their California counterparts by threatening legal action against wind farms, reports yesterday's Observer (The Sunday Guardian, as it were). The death - one year ago - of a single red kite, named Filled Heart, is apparently threatening the government's alternative energy plan.

In the California case, a lawsuit has been filed by campaigners seeking to prevent the deaths of 5,500 birds a year. A Spanish study indicated that "6,000 birds were killed by turbines in a year."

What the article fails to mention is that a study conducted by the UK's Mammal Society and published in a 2003 edition of Mammal Review indicates that British cats kill about 27 million birds a year.