Birdlife South Africa together with the department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs, Rural Development and Land Reform have issued “best practice guidelines” to guide pre and post construction of bird monitoring at wind energy facilities.
The Northern Cape is a focal point for renewable energy facilities including solar energy and wind energy. Renewable Energy Development Zones (REDZ) were gazetted to promote and fast track renewable energy developments within these zones.
The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) regulations under the National Environmental Management Act requires a mitigation hierarchy to be implemented in full of which mitigation is one of its components. This entails minimizing residual negative environmental and biodiversity impacts renewable energy facilities may have.
Unfortunately, despite the risk mitigation interventions such as changes to the design layout of wind farms, bird impacts are still being observed.
Environmental Management Plans (EMPs) further aim to reduce such environmental and biodiversity impacts through management practices.
In the Northern Cape a number of bird species are at risk from wind turbine collisions. These include amongst others Jackal buzzard, Verraux’s eagle, Martial eagle, Ludwig’s bustard, White-backed vulture and various other birds of conservation concern. Scientists are concerned as all these species are key to ecosystem services.
One of the risk mitigation activities being implemented is “observer-led shut down” of wind turbines. Observers are strategically positioned across a wind energy facility and warn the operations control room of birds in the vicinity of turbines. Individual turbines are then accordingly stopped until the potential collision risk subsides.
The most recent interventions being assessed is to paint one of the blades of each wind turbine red. This creates visual signals for birds that deter them from flying into the blades. All role players are optimistic for positive findings towards protecting our avifauna.
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