I write in response to your article “Youths blamed for gull deaths” (Evening Mail, August 8).
How lame are the excuses provided by Tesco!
For one thing, the children would have to be supermen for reaching the rotors with their chips.
As for blaming the food lying on the parking lot itself, it makes more sense, but it also means that we should remove all potential bird food from wind farm grounds, wherever these are – ie lay tarmac over vast expanses, thus contributing to global warming in more than one way.
The comment “Birds live harmoniously with wind farms” from Birdlife expert Russell Marsh is disingenuous. The RSPB recently admitted that wind turbines routinely kill grouse, pigeons, kestrels, and buzzards. And I can cite several scientific monitoring studies showing that each wind turbine kills, on average, 20-50 birds a year, and twice as many bats. One million wind turbines worldwide will kill 20-50m birds a year.
As for encasing the rotors in mesh, engineers will tell you that the cost would be prohibitive, productivity would drop to preposterous levels, and the turbines would crash to the ground in moderate winds.
MARK DUCHAMP
Birds and wind farms manager, IBERICA 2000
Pedreguer, Spain
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2007/08/16/wind-turbines-kill-20-50-birds/