A scientific study by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and the Philipps University of Marburg, published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation, has shown that wind turbines would have a negative impact on the lives of bats.
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Excessive noise pollution
To meet the planet's growing energy needs, the world is increasingly turning to wind turbines. In 2022, Germany was the fifth country where the energy provided by wind turbines was the highest in relation to their electricity production. Today there are 30,000 wind turbines in the country.
The study showed that when wind speeds are high and wind turbines are in operation, the activity of surrounding bats within a radius of 80 to 450 meters in this area decreases by almost 80%.
“We found that activity of bats, which typically forage in narrow, structurally dense forest vegetation, decreases by an average of 77% within 80 to 450 meters of wind turbines as wind speed increases when the turbines are in operation. “In contrast, bat activity was not affected by wind speed when the wind turbines were turned off,” said Julia Ellerbrok, a former doctoral student on the project and now a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biology at Philipps University.
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“You are losing valuable habitat on a large scale.”
The researchers explain the decline in this activity with the noise pollution caused by the operation of the wind turbine at high wind speeds. A noise that could be heard from far away and would drive bats away from a habitat that is so valuable to them.
“The movements of the wind turbine rotor not only generate wake turbulence, but also considerable noise. Both factors can affect bats over several hundred meters. Forest bats that hunt under the canopy are unlikely to come into contact with wake turbulence. Rather, they could be affected by noise emissions from wind turbines, even if the frequency range of the noise is much smaller than that of echolocation calls. If bats actively avoid the noise emissions from wind turbines, they lose a large amount of valuable habitat,” explains Christian Voigt, head of the Evolutionary Ecology Department at Leibniz-IZW.
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