When Green Energy Meets Endangered Species In Ontario

...you get something like this decision from the Environmental Registry, allowing Grand Valley Wind Farms Inc. to build nine wind turbines in the Township of East Luther Grand Valley on Bobolink habitat.  The restrictions seem quite elaborate, and involve "more than mitigation measures or “replacing” what is lost", for example providing and maintaining 12.5 hectares of Prime Bobolink habitat on nearby Grand Valley owned land and timing construction activity to avoid the bird's nesting season.  An idea of the amount of resistance to the project can be gleaned from this passage:

A total of 89 comments were received in response to this Environmental Registry notice. Forty-eight responses were form letters which objected to allowing a private developer to harm species at risk and questioned how such authorizations can be justified under the ESA. The individual comments expressed concern that the focus was on business interests rather than protection of species at risk and urged consideration of alternatives which would not have a negative impact on Bobolink (five responses were duplicates).


Looks like the form letters came from the now defunct Wind Concerns Ontario

Birds And Wind Turbines

 An interesting study in PLoS ONE: Collision Mortality Has No Discernible Effect on Population Trends of North American Birds.  The authors essentially conclude that, while

"...millions of North American birds are killed annually by collisions with manmade structures, this source of mortality has no discernible effect on populations.


Naturally, I wanted to specify where wind-turbines fit into this picture, so I emailed one of the authors,  Robert M. Zink from the Bell Museum of Natural History.  He was kind enough to respond last evening, explaining that turbines constituted a relatively small component of man-induced avian mortality, in fact a trivial component when considered next to the effects of windows or even house-cats.

Mind you, this isn't an excuse not to make structures as bird-proof as possible.  The City of Toronto, for example has guidelines re how to do that here.  Zink's study is also fairly broad-brushed, and I don't know that it accounts for possible effects upon species at risk such as the Bobolinks of Grand Valley, where Grand Valley Wind Farms wants to build nine turbines.  In such instances, there might well be reason to oppose the developer's efforts.