Endangered Black-faced Spoonbills alter migration across the Yellow Sea due to offshore wind farms

Author: Lai, Yi-Chien; et al. | China, South Korea, Wildlife

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The Black-faced Spoonbill (Platalea minor), an endangered and flagship species inhabiting coastal wetlands along the East Asian–Australasian Flyway, migrates annually between its primary breeding grounds on the west coast of the Korean Peninsula and its wintering grounds, predominantly Japan, Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The Yellow Sea crossing, averaging 14.1 h, is perhaps the most challenging part of their migration. The southwest coast of the Yellow Sea, crucial for migratory birds, hosts the world’s largest concentration of operational offshore wind farms. In 2021, driven by the government’s year-end deadline for receiving subsidies for offshore wind energy generation, a surge in installations occurred in China. The surge resulted in China possessing nearly half of the world’s total offshore wind energy capacity. While the barrier effect, which impedes the natural movement of wildlife, caused by individual offshore wind farms is generally considered marginal for nonmarine bird species compared with seabirds, the cumulative effects of multiple wind farms may be substantial. Here, we report two cases of GPS-cellular tracked Black-faced Spoonbills altering their migration routes during the Yellow Sea crossing after encountering successive offshore wind farms.

(a) M03 encountered three offshore wind farms (OWFs) before returning to South Korea during its first southward Yellow Sea crossing. The red arrowhead indicates the track’s position and direction at the top of each hour. (b) M03 circled beside a turbine under construction in the third wind farm after dusk. Sentinel-1 satellite images on 2021-11-09, 2 days after M03’s passage, showed an installation vessel. Satellite images were downloaded through Google Earth Engine. The four GPS altitude intervals are related to the height of the blade rotation zone: <22 m (below it), 22–155 m (within the typical range), 155–200 m (potentially within the range of newer turbines), and >200 m (above it)

Yi-Chien Lai, Chi-Yeung Choi, Kisup Lee, In-Ki Kwon, Chia-Hsiang Lin, Luke Gibson, Wei-Yea Chen
Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan; Environmental Research Center, Duke Kunshan University, Kunshan, Jiangsu, China; School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China; Waterbird Network Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea; Research Center for Endangered Species, National Institute of Ecology, Yeongyang, Republic of Korea

Ecology: 27 November 2024. doi: 10.1002/ecy.4485

Endangered Black-faced Spoonbills alter migration across the Yellow Sea due to offshore wind farms

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