On a Wing and Low Air: The Surprising Way Wind Turbines Kill Bats

[Staff]

On a Wing and Low Air: The Surprising Way Wind Turbines Kill Bats
It is the pressure change--not the blades--that wipe out thousands of bats annually at wind farms
By David Biello
August 26, 2008

On a Wing and Low Air: The Surprising Way Wind Turbines Kill Bats: Scientific American
excerpt from above:

"As turbine height increases, bat deaths increase exponentially," says ecologist Erin Baerwald of the University of Calgary in Alberta, who led research into the deaths as part of her master's project. "What we found is a lot of internal hemorrhaging."

As the wind moves through a wind turbine's blades, pressure drops behind them by five to 10 kilopascals (a pascal is a unit of pressure), and any bat unlucky enough to blunder into such an undetectable low pressure zone would find its lungs and blood vessels rapidly expanding and, quickly, bursting under the new conditions...

[Staff]

Wind turbines put bats under (low) pressure
Scientists probe barotrauma fatalities
By Lester Haines
Posted in Biology, 26th August 2008 14:09 GMT

Wind turbines put bats under (low) pressure • The Register
excerpt from above:

If a bat enters this zone, it can suffer "barotrauma" - internal haemorrhaging provoked by sudden expansion of the lungs* which puts pressure on surrounding tissue and bursts capillaries. Birds, which have more "rigid and robust" lungs, are less susceptible to the condition.

Lead scientist Erin Baerwald said: "An atmospheric pressure drop at wind turbine blades is an undetectable - and potentially unforseeable - hazard for bats, thus partially explaining the large number of bat fatalities at...

[Gloria]

opps! I didn't see you already had this one.

[Equilibrium]

Anyone else notice cave bats haven’t been listed as Federally endangered??? My guess is because the race is on for BigWind and our bats are gonna get the short end of the stick. BigWind and their sprawling wind farms would have big time problems working around the endangered species act. Gloria> the problem for bats is called barotrauma... Current Biology - Barotrauma is a significant cause of bat fatalities at wind turbines. I seriously doubt bats can be taught to exhale when flying past these industrial wind turbines to avoid death but…. I’m sure when the US finally gets backed into a corner and can’t ignore demands for more research to save bats…. er uh…. industrial wind farms…. our tax dollars will go to the wind proponents’ pseudo-science.