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Two weeks ago, Environment Minister Murray Watt gave the green light<\/a> to the controversial Robbins Island wind farm off the northwest coast of Tasmania. Years in development, it is set to be one of the largest wind projects in the country \u2014 if it goes ahead.<\/p>\n But where the developers saw a win, conservationists saw something else: a wind farm right in the middle of one of Australia\u2019s most sensitive bird migration corridors.<\/p>\n \u201cYou could hardly imagine a worse place to put a wind farm from a bird point of view,\u201d Dr Golo Maurer, director of Bird Conservation Strategy at BirdLife Australia, told the\u00a0SwitchedOn Australia\u00a0<\/a>podcast this week.<\/p>\n The minister has attached conditions to the project, including a three-year survey of the endangered orange-bellied parrot before construction can begin, and possible turbine shutdowns<\/a> to manage the impacts. Yet Maurer believes this kind of conflict could have been avoided if the right tools had been available from the start.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the AVISTEP tool [Avian Sensitivity Tool for Energy Planning] had been available when Robbins Island was first being considered it would score a bright, bright red on the traffic light system,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Based on a model already in use in\u00a0India, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, Kenya, Laos, Uzbekistan and Egypt,\u00a0BirdLife Australia will launch an Australian version of AVISTEP in November. <\/p>\n It will clearly show where renewables such as wind farms, solar arrays and transmission lines are likely to have low, medium, or high impacts on birds and biodiversity.<\/p>\n Maurer hopes it will change the way renewables are planned in Australia.<\/p>\n \u201cThe easiest, fastest time to solve a problem is at the very beginning, before it has grown into an issue that has this sort of investment. No one who develops something like that, wants to wait for decades, or more, to actually get the project online.\u201d<\/p>\n Until now, bird conservationists have often been drawn into battles over individual projects, when investment and community tensions are already running high. <\/p>\n AVISTEP aims to shift that dynamic by offering a proactive tool. Anyone \u2014 developers, government, or the public \u2014 will be able to log in, zoom into a region, and instantly see whether a site is a green-light zone or an ecological red flag.<\/p>\n BirdLife Australia stresses it is not opposed to renewable energy. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of infrastructure that\u2019s going into the landscape, and we need to make sure that it goes in the places where it does the least harm to birds and biodiversity.\u201d<\/p>\n How the tool works<\/p>\n Over two years in development, and funded by Fortescue, AVISTEP draws on decades of research, including citizen science bird sightings, ecological surveys, and expert advice.<\/p>\n It divides the continent into a grid of 5 x 5 kilometre squares, using a traffic light system to show risk: green for low concern, then yellow, orange, and red for the highest risk areas.<\/p>\n \u201cIt goes from green, where we have very few concerns for bird species, and then there\u2019s a light yellow, a dark orange and a red, where we have the biggest concerns for bird species,\u201d Maurer explains.<\/p>\n He likens the data compilation to \u201cstacking a cake,\u201d layering: bird distribution and migration data, species\u2019 resilience or vulnerability to strikes, vegetation and protected-area maps, and anatomical and behavioural traits that affect flight.<\/p>\n \u201cWe then also looked into their general maneuverability\u2026 to put it simply, a chicken doesn\u2019t fly quite as well as a swallow. So not being able to fly that well means you can\u2019t evade turbines or transmission lines as easily.\u201d<\/p>\n Some risks are counterintuitive.<\/p>\n \u201cThe needle tail swift has extremely thin wings. It\u2019s the fastest bird in supported flight. And you\u2019d think they\u2019re not going to have any problems with wind farms,\u201d Maurer says. \u201cBut we know that they are one of the species that is most frequently affected by wind farm strikes.\u201d<\/p>\n Raptors, too, are vulnerable.<\/p>\n \u201cKestrels or eagles have really, really great eyesight. [But] if you use this eyesight to just look down on the ground, because you\u2019re looking for a mouse or whatever food item you\u2019re looking for, you\u2019re not looking ahead, so you might be bumping into infrastructure a lot more easily.\u201d<\/p>\n And then there are the bustards.<\/p>\n \u201cOne species that I\u2019m fairly concerned about in Australia that\u2019s actually currently not even listed as threatened, is the Australian bustard.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know from the great Indian bustard, that they are very, very prone to flying into transmission lines. That\u2019s because of their biology. They are ground-living species. They have their eyes on the side of the head, so they can\u2019t see right in front of them.<\/p>\n \u201cIn addition, they are very heavy, broad-winged birds [and] not very maneuverable. So they hit transmission lines a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Birds, climate change, and the bigger picture<\/p>\n Maurer acknowledges that global studies suggest bird strikes from turbines are a relatively minor threat compared to habitat destruction, invasive species, and climate change.<\/p>\n But there is still much we don\u2019t know about how birds interact with renewable infrastructure. Wind farms must monitor bird strikes, yet they are not required to make those results public.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is data that doesn\u2019t often get shared very freely. They\u2019re not forced to release that information. They have to collect it, they have to work with the government to provide those data, but they don\u2019t have to make it publicly available,\u201d says Maurer. \u201cSome do, some don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n For vulnerable species, even a handful of deaths can be devastating.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t put wind farms in the wrong places, it is just a minor threat, as compared to the threats of climate change and other things.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, there are only a few hundred Regent Honeyeaters left in the wild. Locating turbines or transmission lines in their last breeding grounds \u2014 the Hunter Valley, Capertee Valley, or parts of north-east Victoria \u2014 could push the species closer to extinction.<\/p>\n Seabirds face risks too. Australia\u2019s proposed offshore wind zones overlap with foraging areas of albatrosses.<\/p>\n \u201cThese majestic birds have three, four metre wingspans and have evolved in a habitat where there\u2019s never been any obstacle. The only thing that gets in their way is a 40 metre wave.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike Europe and the US, where offshore wind farms are common in the Atlantic, Australia has no comparable data on albatross interactions with turbines. Maurer says that gap makes monitoring and transparency critical.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s really a lot that we still need to get to the bottom of before we can answer those questions and some of that will be, unfortunately, very, very closely monitoring the first projects that are going out there, making the data available to research or to the public to scrutinize and to learn from very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n Maurer believes early transparency will help not just birds, but communities and developers too.<\/p>\n To listen to the full interview with Dr Golo Maurer, please tune in to the latest episode of the SwitchedOn Australia podcast: SwitchedOn podcast: The game changing tool to protect birds in Australia\u2019s renewable rollout<\/a><\/p>\n
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