Bird and Windpower Resources

For folks interested in the impacts of windpower development on birds and other wildlife, the National Wind Coordinating Collaborative (NWCC) has a lot of online resources that might be of interest.

NWCC is a U.S. consensus-based collaborative of agency, nonprofit, and business interests formed in 1994 to identify issues affecting the use of wind power, establish dialogue among key stakeholders, and catalyze appropriate activities to support the development of environmentally, economically, and politically sustainable commercial markets for wind power. Over the past 14 years, the NWCC has developed a wealth of resources addressing the impacts of windpower on birds and other wildlife, most of which are available on the NWCC website.

As a matter of full disclosure, I'm currently on the NWCC Steering Committee and a Core Member of the NWCC Wildlife Workgroup.

Links to most of the NWCC wind and wildlife resources are here:
www.nationalwind.org/workgroups/wildlife

These include the following recent publications:

* Assessing Impacts of Wind-Energy Development on Nocturnally Active Birds and Bats: A Guidance Document (the Journal of Wildlife Studies Paper November 2007)

* Critical Literature Review: Impact of Wind Energy and Related Human Activities on Grassland and Shrub-Steppe Birds (October 2007)

* Songbird Protocol (Updated June 2007)

* NWCC Mitigation Toolbox (May 2007 - 962KB PDF)

The toolbox describes various mitigation measures or tools that can be used in the decision-making process. To help guide future decision making, this toolbox provides information about existing mitigation policies and guidelines, as well as on whether strategies are based on sound scientific research. It indicates the effectiveness of various methods of avoiding, minimizing, or compensating for direct and indirect impacts on wildlife caused by wind power facilities. The toolbox is a living document and is updating twice annually.

There are also minutes and reports from meetings, and powerpoint presentations on a lot of issues, including a recent presentation on Lesser Prairie-Chicken impacts in Texas.

There's an embarrassment of riches here, one could easily spend a week just reading all the great material here.

So bookmark the NWCC wind and wildlife resources page and make it a point to check there as a starting point when looking for good information on wind and wildlife issues.

NWCC puts out a brief bi-monthly email update, so if you want to keep up with the latest NWCC happenings including events and resources under development, you can subscribe by sending an email to Taylor Kennedy (tkennedy AT resolv.org).