Blaming the Wind? The Impact of Wind Turbine on Bird Biodiversity

We quantitatively assess the impacts of onshore wind turbines on local bird diversity using nationwide data in China. Results show that one standard-deviation increase in wind turbines (approximately 84 turbines) reduces bird abundance by 5.27% from the mean value of 5.38 and leads to a 3.7% reduction in bird species richness from the mean value of 66 at the county level. The negative impacts originate from resident birds, birds in grasslands, and waterfowl. Biodiversity protection helps to safeguard bird abundance against wind turbine installations. We also find that habitat loss after the wind turbine installations contributes to biodiversity loss. Our results also suggest that bird fatalities caused by wind turbines are much smaller than those caused by fossil-fuel power stations when bird deaths from coal mining, plant operation, and climate change are accounted for.