There are many reasons to reject the building of wind farms anywhere in Britain. A search of the internet provides ample evidence of the environmental destruction of large areas of the countryside through the installation of turbines and infrastructure. Trees and hedges cut down, roads, pylons and electrical wires installed.
However, one of our major concerns is the mounting evidence that wind farms are causing the deaths worldwide of tens of thousands of bats and birds, including many endangered species.
A wind farm in Germany is being shut down because of the deaths, in particular of red kites.
The RSPB and others have been attempting to reintroduce the red kite to areas of Britain, but already there have been fatalities at Welsh wind farms.
Some people may favour the building of wind farms in the mistaken belief that they will prevent the building of new nuclear power stations. Turbines are, however, very inefficient. Take the last couple of weeks of very calm weather when little or no power can be produced by turbines. Then they have to be backed up by conventional or nuclear sources which have to run 24/7 regardless, thus no savings to carbon dioxide emissions are actually made.
Therefore wind turbines are neither green nor environmentally friendly and will not help at all in the fight against climate change.
Climate change, as environmental organisations will tell you, is probably the biggest threat to our wildlife, but we need real alternative power sources that will cut CO2 emissions and not wind farms that serve no purpose and don’t give our wildlife a chance.
Alice Cooke
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2006/11/15/wind-turbines-fatal-to-birds/