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Articles about Danish offshore wind & wildlife studies
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
There are links below to several articles that have appeared about the new Danish report, "Danish Offshore Wind - Key Environmental Issues", and of the related recent Danish Conference, "Final Results: The Danish Monitoring Programme".
The conference and report presented the results of eight years of scientific study at Denmark's two largest offshore wind farms to get pre-construction and post-construction data on the effects of these wind farms on birds, marine mammals, fish, benthos, as well as the people living in neighboring coastal communities.
The Danish study reports that there were virtually no negative impacts of these offshore wind farms to birds, seals or fish and that attitudes in neighboring coastal communities were largely positive and support was growing as pre-construction worries of a drop in tourism have evaporated as people realized this had not occurred after the wind turbines were in view.
The results on birds were particularly interesting, showing very low incidences of collision and strong avoidance behavior of birds, as these images of bird radar tracks around the wind farms show:
 Oddly, a Cape Wind opponent who flew to Denmark to attend the conference claims in an article that the only bird studied was the eider,which is not correct. In addition to eiders and other sea ducks, many other species of birds were studied including: terns, gulls, cormorants, auks, as well as other species.
Note: Click here to read an article in the Patriot Ledger Click here to read an article on Cape Cod Today Click here to read an aritcle in Renewable Energy Access Click here to read an article in the Cape Cod Times Click here to read an article in the Yarmouth Register Click here to read an article in the Vineyard Gazette |