Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
anthropogenic causes of fauna deaths. For instance, while it is understandable that
the primary emphasis in the case of aviation is on safety, the reporting does not even
allude to effects of collision mortalities on the species involved even when they
entailed quite large numbers of threatened taxa - and certainly at a level for many
of these that is higher than currently appears to be the case for the wind energy
industry.Infact,itisevidentfromtheAustralianTransportSafetyBureau(
2012
)
report that remains of collision victims are often recovered, but that even basic iden-
tification of species involved is highly variable in aviation reporting. While this may
bedificultinmanycases,itdoesnotappeartooperatetoanystandard.Noneofthe
various methods routinely used to reduce collisions around aerodromes would be
contemplated as acceptable for reducing collisions at wind farms and nor is aero-
drome management required to adopt the environmental strategies of avoid, miti-
gate and offset as is required of the wind energy sector.
We certainly know that other sectors - like road transport - entail fauna colli-
sions.Butinaregulatorysense,theseremainalmostentirelyunquantiiedanddis-
regarded. New projects are not subject to approval requirements similar to those
required of the wind industry.
Bird and Bat Collision Assessment in Wind Farm
Planning and Approval Processes
The process of determining whether a wind farm will obtain statutory approval in
Australia routinely requires assessment of the potential for birds and bats to collide
with turbines and whether taxa of particular concern maybe involved. If there is
considered to be potential for such species to collide, it is usual for regulatory
authorities to require predictive estimation of the numbers of such collisions that
may occur. As noted above, the simple presence of a particular species at the site
and even the frequency of its flights are not of themselves good indicators of poten-
tialcollisionrisk.Mathematicalmodellinghasthusbeendevelopedwiththepur-
pose of incorporating a number of other factors and provides a quantified mechanism
to estimate collision risk.
Collision Risk Modelling
Biosishasevaluatedthepotentialriskstomanydifferentbirdspeciesofcollisions
withturbinesfor27proposedcommercial-scalewindfarmsinAustraliasince2000.
This has entailed quantifying risk for a wide variety of threatened and migratory
birdspeciesusingtheBiosiscollisionriskmodel(Smalesetal.
2013
).Riskmodel-
ling has its principal application in the planning stages of a wind farm. It is frequently
used by a wind farm developer to evaluate options for input to the design of the
proposed facility to reduce impacts to birds and subsequently by regulators in
