Impacts of onshore wind energy production on biodiversity 

Abstract:
Wind is increasingly used as a renewable source of energy worldwide. However, harvesting wind energy can have negative consequences for biodiversity. In this Review, we summarize the growth of onshore wind power, its impacts on species and ecosystems, and how those impacts are assessed and mitigated. Across the construction, operation and decommissioning stages, wind facilities are associated with wildlife fatality and behavioural change as well as alteration, loss and fragmentation of terrestrial and aerial habitat. These negative consequences can be mitigated by avoiding construction of wind turbines at sensitive sites, detecting and deterring wildlife, curtailing turbines to reduce fatalities, and replacing lost habitats. Uncertainty about wildlife populations and their demographic parameters, the rate and extent of build-out of onshore wind energy, and best practices for mitigation, as well as variability in regulatory requirements by country or region, all contribute to the difficulty of predicting the consequences of this technology for biodiversity. Scenario-based modelling that incorporates population- and community-level consequences to biodiversity from varying degrees of wind energy development – including the cumulative effects of multiple facilities – is key to addressing this uncertainty.

Todd E. Katzner, US Geological Survey, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, Boise, Idaho
David M. Nelson, Appalachian Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Frostburg
Ana Teresa Marques, BIOPOLIS Program in Genomics, Biodiversity and Land Planning, CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, InBIO Laboratório Associado/BIOPOLIS, Campus de Vairão, Universidade do Porto, Vairão, and CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, InBIO Laboratório Associado, Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Christian C. Voigt, Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, and Institute of Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, Germany
Sergio A. Lambertucci, Grupo de Investigaciones en Biología de la Conservación, INIBIOMA Universidad Nacional del Comahue—CONICET, Bariloche, Argentina, and Department of Migration, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Radolfzell, Germany
Natalia Rebolo, Grupo de Investigaciones en Biología de la Conservación, INIBIOMA Universidad Nacional del Comahue—CONICET, Bariloche, Argentina
Enrico Bernard, Laboratório de Ciência Aplicada à Conservação da Biodiversidade, Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, and Departamento de Ecologia e Conservação, Instituto de Ciências Naturais, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Brazil
Robert Diehl, US Geological Survey, Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, Bozeman, Montana
Megan Murgatroyd, FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and HawkWatch International, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Nature Reviews: Biodiversity. Published: 08 September 2025. doi:10.1038/s44358-025-00078-1