Wind Energy development in Latin America and The Caribbean: Risk assessment for flying vertebrates

NATALIA REBOLO IFRÁN; NICOLAS LOIS; LAMBERTUCCI, SERGIO A.

Sibenik

Conferencia; 7th Conference on Wind Energy and Wildlife Impacts ? CWW 2023; 2023

OIKON. Super Natural

Wind turbines occupy the altitude range of the airspace with the highest abundance of flying fauna,which can have negative impacts on wildlife species, particularly birds and bats. These animalsmay collide with turbines or associated power lines, suffer habitat loss, or be displaced. In thisstudy, we provided an update of the scientific knowledge on the impacts of wind farms on birdsand bats in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In addition, we used available informationon the distribution of threatened species to map hotspots of exposure to wind farm infrastructure.Finally, we used wind potential density to identify areas where wind industry developmentcould pose a risk to threatened species. We identified approximately 857 wind farms, with morethan 16,000 wind turbines in 20 countries. However, we found that with only 19 scientific papersinvestigating different impacts on bird and bat species, the amount of research on the impact ofwind farms on flying fauna is still very limited. Six countries in the region studied the issue, with11 articles in Mexico, five in South America and three in Central America and the Caribbean. Theimpact studies included 114 bird and 60 bat species, an insignificant number given the large biodiversityhotspot that the LAC region represents. The impact of wind farms on three species of batsclassified as globally threatened by the IUCN, the Minor Red Bat (Lasiurus minor), the Red Fruit Bat(Stenoderma rufum) and the Lesser Long-nosed Bat (Leptonycteris yerbabuenae), was recorded.No studies identified globally threatened bird species affected by wind farm development. Still,our maps showed that there is high exposure to wind farm impacts for threatened bird species inMexico, northeastern Brazil, the southern coast of Brazil, the coast of Uruguay, and central Chile. Inaddition, our results showed that the highest values of wind potential, where there are currently nowind farms, are distributed below 40° South latitude. These areas, which have not yet been greatlyaffected by wind energy development, could be prime locations for future wind farms, which couldnegatively affect the population dynamics and demography of species sensitive to these installations. Here, we highlight the urgent need for field surveys in the LAC region and provide not only overlay maps to identify the most sensitive current and future areas, but also a list of threatened species that may be affected now or in the future.