Post-construction bird and bat fatality monitoring studies at wind energy projects in Latin America: A summary and review

Abstract

Most post-construction fatality monitoring (PCFM) studies to date have focused on North America and Europe, and this information has been used to assess the impacts of large-scale wind energy on birds and bats. A comprehensive review of wind-wildlife fatality information is still lacking for Latin America; however, given the current installed capacity and the projected increase of wind energy production across Latin America, it is important to fill in the knowledge gap on impacts to wildlife. To provide a current summary of known impacts to birds and bats in Latin America and to identify gaps on this important information, we compiled, reviewed, and synthesized bird and bat fatality information at wind energy projects in the region. Our literature search resulted in 10 references relevant to the scope of this review, six of which provided number of fatalities by species and the type of PCFM search being conducted, meeting our criteria for inclusion in fatality summaries. From this pool, we found that Passerines composed the majority of bird fatalities, with no Threatened bird species reported. The bat family Molossidae composed the majority of bat fatalities, with one Threatened bat species reported. Our review of all studies and focused assessment of only those studies with fatality summaries indicated differences in the amount of information and level of detail related to bird and bat fatalities at wind energy projects in Latin America. Due to the taxon-specific nature of collision risk with wind turbines for birds and bats, it is difficult to make a general impact assessment of wind energy development on birds and bats in Latin America, especially given the limited information available. However, this summary can be used as a starting point to inform conservation efforts aiming at avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating impacts of wind energy development on birds and bats and future, standardized results would enhance our ability to do so.

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“…WTs affect many bird and bat species [101] at all land-cover types [44,74]. Still, the actual number of fatalities is highly variable (Table S2), indicating that vulnerability and mortality reflect a combination of taxon-, season-, site-, population-, and turbine-specific factors [8,45,78,80,94,151,153].…”

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