FAIR JUSTICE FOR ALL?

 

How Green Is This Energy

 

Reporting by:  Tim King

 

At the moment in the northern part of the department there are 6 projects for 56 wind turbines. Although far from densely-populated areas, they will nevertheless be an unavoidable fixture in the landscape, towering 350 feet above that crest of hills behind Lodève and visible all the way down the Herault Valley. As an integral part of an aeolian Maginot Line, stretching from the Spanish border up into the Massif Central, directly in the flight-path of thousands of migrating birds, their impact on wildlife will be considerable. 
   In theory birds will rise above them, but the reality is that many, exhausted after crossing the Mediterranean, keen to get to their nesting sites, will be flying too low and so be killed by the turning blades. But even the larger, resident birds of prey are in danger. Anyone who has watched an Eurasian eagle owl, one of the world’s largest owls, going full belt at a seemingly solid wall of trees and without pause sliding its massive six-foot wingspan between the branches like a ghost melting into castle wall will be sceptical that such agile birds can be affected by a slowly-turning blade. But leaves, branches and tree-trunks do not move – the owl races towards a wind turbine unaware that what is a gap now will not be a gap when it gets there.
    Wind farm projects kill thousands of birds, many of them protected by law. But according to several studies, for every bird killed there are ten bat deaths. Bats are important in our fragile eco-system, the growing number of wind-farms are a serious threat to their existence and, for those who care about such things, the manner of their death is particularly unpleasant.
The bat, with its sophisticated echo-location radar, is well-equipped to avoid solid objects. Indeed, in a Canadian study 90% of bats killed by wind turbines successfully avoided the falling blade – but were then caught in the vortex created by its down-draught. In a vortex the pressure drops suddenly, the bat’s lungs burst and it drowns in its own blood – an effect known at barotrauma. The smaller the animal, the smaller the pressure-drop needed to burst its lungs. “4 kilopascals is enough to kill a rat,” says Erin Baerwald, author of the Canadian study. “Bats are much smaller and wind turbines produce a pressure drop of 5 - 10 kilopascals.” 
   Birds are not affected by barotrauma because they have rigid, tubular lungs. The terrible irony is that bats are drawn to wind turbines because insects – their principal food – gather in the heat generated by the blades and in the light on top of the mast. Also, when seeking a mate, bats congregate at the highest point – so they go to a wind turbine to eat and reproduce and instead are sucked to their death. A German study estimated wind-farms kill at least 200,000 bats a year, and that number is rising, with mortality highest when the turbines are on exposed ridges, like the ones above Lodève. 
    So who cares? Bats get a bad press. Their jerky, flittering wing movements make us nervous – and then there’s their connection with vampires...... a few thousand less, why worry? Because bats eat insects – lots of insects. In a night a bat will eat 1,500 insects – in year a small colony may get through 9 million. Many of those insects are harmful to us – the death-watch beetle, for example, or just those wretched blood-sucking mozzies. Already the malaria-carrying mosquito is back

in southern Europe – if we take away its biggest predator it will spread even more

quickly. Then there’s the matter of the law: bats are protected by national and

European law. The irony is that if you or I deliberately kill a bat, we are liable for a

heavy fine, even a suspended prison sentence, while others are given hundreds of

thousands of euros to build wind-farms and thus kill thousands of bats. Do we care

about such illogicality? The wind-farm project in the Fenouillèdes (Pyrénées-Orientales)

will almost certainly kill the last remaining pair         of Bonelli’s Eagles in the

Languedoc-Roussillon. Further west there are           perhaps 20 pairs left, then

that’s it. Over and out. The military term for bird         and bat mortality is “collateral

damage” – regrettable but inevitable: the price to        be paid (by the bird or bat, not by

us) for producing what we like to call “green electricity.”