It was a talk about how nothing died -quite rare for biologists because biological science is seemingly most interested in death and explaining why things died!
In an nutshell, Ricardo Tome and team are using radar and field observations to minimise collision deaths of soaring birds as they pass through wind farms -in fact they have done better than that, they have reduced the number of deaths to zero in their study site: a wind farm in south west Portugal.
I found myself sat opposite him and some of his colleagues over one of those long, tasty, boozy, cafe lunches during the SPEA conference (Birdlife partner for Portugal) that I was talked about in my last blog post. He was a very humourous and entertaining lunch companion as he explained his project in more detail.
As a flock approaches the wind farm, the radar and human observers (placed at some distance around the site), track the flock and decide if the huge sweeping blades of the wind turbines should be stopped. If the flock continue inbound, the turbines are briefly halted, just long enough for the flock to pass through safely. Stopping is near instantaneous and apparently it is quite something to see the wind farm suddenly shut down in unison.
During the whole study period no birds were killed by collisions with wind turbines and there was minimal impact on electricity generation. This seems like a win-win situation to me and captured my imagination, especially because I am an East Anglian lass living on the border of the North Sea in sight of many new off shore wind farms and important coastal areas of birds.
I encourage you all to follow this link and hit the "translate" button -if you dont speak Portuguese
http://www.cienciahoje.pt/index.php?oid=54734&op=all
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