Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
NewSouthWales
2011
; Government of South Australia
2012
). Even those that are
quite prescriptive do not require the use of standard methods and metrics to ensure
that results are directly comparable between wind farms.
As a general rule, wind farm operators are required to submit results of collision
monitoring to the state authority responsible for fauna conservation. However for
most wind farms, neither the regulator nor the wind farm operator has been required
to make their monitoring results publicly available. Conditions of approval for indi-
vidual facilities in Tasmania have required publication of results and the Draft
Planning Guidelines for New South Wales stipulate that results should be made
publicly available (Department of Planning and Infrastructure New South Wales
2011
).Bycontrast,governmentagenciesinVictoriaconsidermonitoringresultsto
be the commercially confidential property of the wind farm operator and there has
generally been no requirement to make results publicly available. Nonetheless,
some wind farm operators there have recently begun to release results of their moni-
toring. Despite requirements in some places that results are reported to regulatory
authorities, there is no central repository or analyses of these data.
For these reasons, the wind energy industry, the wider community and even regu-
lators have little sound, empirical basis for improved decision-making about real
impacts on bird or bat populations in south-eastern Australia. As an example, a
March2010
Briefing note on the effects of wind farms on bird and bat populations
prepared for the South Australian Department for Environment and Heritage (Sharp
2010
) discusses potential impacts based entirely on overseas experience of early
wind farms. It provides no information about effects measured at wind farms in
South Australia. I do not know whether this was because information from South
Australia was not available, but at the time of the document's release, there were
seven commercial-scale wind farms in the State and the first of them had been oper-
atingfor7years.
In2010Iapproachedfourwindenergycompaniesforinformationaboutcolli-
sion mortalities at their wind farms inVictoria and SouthAustralia. My primary
focus was the mainland wedge-tailed eagle
Aquila audax audax
, but information
about all bird and bat species was requested. I was provided with information for
eightwindfarms(seveninVictoriaandoneinSouthAustralia).Theinvestigations
at the various sites were carried out by a number of ecologists, none of whom were
fromBiosis.Ihaveusedtheseresultstocompileasummaryofdocumentedbirdand
batfatalities.ThewindfarmsincludedWaubraincentralVictoriaandIhaveincor-
porated updated information published by Acciona Energy (
2012
) following 2 years
of operation of that facility.
Theeightwindfarmshaveacombinedtotalof289turbinesand,asfarasIcould
ascertain,195oftheseweremonitored.Theperiodsofoperationofthewindfarms
varied between 1 and 9 years and the information covers 916 turbine-years of
operation.
The survey has a number of limitations that could not be controlled. It does not
account for variations in species' distributions and available habitats. For example,
some of the sites are close to the coast where seabirds might be affected while others
are not. It also does not consider differences in a species' density between sites or
