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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday August 27 2020, @02:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the simple-changes dept.

Bird deaths down 70 percent after painting wind turbine blades:

Something as simple as black paint could be the key to reducing the number of birds that are killed each year by wind turbines. According to a study conducted at a wind farm on the Norwegian archipelago of Smøla, changing the color of a single blade on a turbine from white to black resulted in a 70-percent drop in the number of bird deaths.

Not everyone is a fan of wind turbines, however, because of their impact on local populations of flying fauna like birds and bats.

[...] Previous laboratory studies have suggested that birds may not be very good at seeing obstructions while they're flying, and adding visual cues like different colored fan blades can increase birds' chances of spotting a rapidly rotating fan.

[...] And so, in 2013, each of the four turbines in the test group had a single blade painted black. In the three years that followed, only six birds were found dead due to striking their turbine blades. By comparison, 18 bird deaths were recorded by the four control wind turbines—a 71.9-percent reduction in the annual fatality rate.

Digging into the data a little more showed some variation on bird deaths depending upon the season. During spring and autumn, fewer bird deaths were recorded at the painted turbines. But in summer, bird deaths actually increased at the painted turbines, and the authors note that the small number of turbines in the study and its relatively short duration both merit longer-term replication studies, both at Smøla and elsewhere.

Journal Reference:
Roel May, Torgeir Nygård, Ulla Falkdalen, et al. Paint it black: Efficacy of increased wind turbine rotor blade visibility to reduce avian fatalities [open], Ecology and Evolution (DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6592)


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 28 2020, @01:42PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 28 2020, @01:42PM (#1043287)

    If we're allowed to invent weird paints, how about equal effort in implementing holograms and flying drones imitating non-human predator species?

    Or of course both.

    Oh look that "nesting platform" with the spinny thing, is unfortunately covered in egg eating serpents oh well fly somewhere else. Oh look that hunting area with the spinny thing has a carnivorous predator bird three times my size already flying around it best move how was I supposed to know that's a quadcopter covered in paper maiche costume of a fricken 40 foot wingspan hungry pterodactyl?

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