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Orkney wind turbines & Geese flight lines


Pole Star
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Do any other pw users think the increasing numbers of small or large wind turbines that seem to pop up like mushrooms over night in the fields all around the Orkney are going to be the victims of constant collisions with geese flighting back to the lochs at night in bad weather ?.

These turbines have gone up at such a rate this year I find it hard to believe & I wonder what guidelines govern the granting of planning permission for erecting & siting of them ? & as I look from where I write this 2 have gone up in the last week & that is right in the path of where I see geese flight back to the loch & there are 2 about a mile to the right of them & I under stand that there are another 6 planning applications in my area alone ! its going to be an interesting time when the geese return from Iceland .

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There was a item in the Journal of Applied Ecology where researchers have found that pink feet avoid wild turbines which pretty much agrees with what I see with my local pinks. However I expect this will not last as new generations of geese apear in the future that become used to the turbines and accept them as part of the landscape. Thats when the troubles will start.

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These turbines have gone up at such a rate this year I find it hard to believe & I wonder what guidelines govern the granting of planning permission for erecting & siting of them ?

 

Whatever guidelines there are you can bet they won't be worth the paper they're written on. The Government has decided these grotesque follies are right-on, cool and 'eco' and will somehow mitigate against the environmental catastrophe caused by human over-population. They also comply with Blair's 'eye-catching' 20-20 renewables garbage. And as there are not enough people in the Orkneys to cause political trouble, I imagine your feelings on the subject will be worth about as much as the guidelines.

I wish I was wrong and this was just a rant. But it isn't and I'm not.

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Thanks for the input chaps all I can say about it at the moment is " time will tell ! " if there are no goose collisions with these small turbines this winter then I for one will be most surprised ! so it will be interesting to see what happens ! remember the the amount of damage a bird the size of a goose can do ? remember the airliner that had to ditch into the Hudson river courtesy of migrating Canada geese !! well I am dam sure a Greylag could take one or more blades of these new small wind turbines when hit at speed but as I said time will tell ? .

Incidentally Gimlet this post is not a rant on my part ! I just wonderd what other wildfowlers views are about the risk of collishions are with geese & how it will affect the flight lines of geese & ducks & any other type of bird for that matter , surely Gimlet you must have seen Swanns ie dead swanns under power lines that have been standing in the same postition for years ? , so what chance do geese ect have with turbines going up all over the place ? . Regards Pole Star

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Incidentally Gimlet this post is not a rant on my part ! I just wonderd what other wildfowlers views are about the risk of collishions are with geese & how it will affect the flight lines of geese & ducks & any other type of bird for that matter , surely Gimlet you must have seen Swanns ie dead swanns under power lines that have been standing in the same postition for years ? , so what chance do geese ect have with turbines going up all over the place ? . Regards Pole Star

 

I didn't mean to imply that your post was a rant, but that mine might be.

I utterly detest wind turbines. Useless as power generators, they are a brutalistic obscenity in the landscape of the most grievous and pointless kind and they have been imposed on communities all over the country purely to satisfy the ambitions and vanities of a handful of politicians who know nothing about wildlife, nothing about the value of landscape and nothing about power generation. I have no doubt that your concerns about their impact on wild birds are well founded.

See- there I go again!

I'm firmly on your side on this one. You're right about powerlines too. This is going to get very much worse. Regulations controlling pylons are to be effectively torn up. Thousands more are scheduled. They won't bury lines because large capital investment projects don't look good on utility company's balance sheets and do nothing for share prices or dividends. Private utility companies are managed on the principals of short-termism. I'm afraid we've swapped the tyranny of the unions for the tyranny of shareholders.

And its the landscape and the wildlife that will pay.

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