Bats are being forced out of their normal feeding grounds by disturbance caused by wind turbines, new research suggests.
A study found that bats avoided an area of lakes and ponds up to 5km away from wind turbines – where they would normally drink water and catch insects.
The findings were labelled a ‘tragedy’ by the research team as renewable power is needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, which causing climate change.
Researchers studied the acoustic signals of bats in parts of Germany with many wind turbines.
Professor Dr Christian Voigt from the Leibniz research institute said:
‘We were able to clearly recognise that those bats which specialized to forage in the open space and in dense vegetation avoided water bodies when wind turbines were located near them.’
The scientists placed acoustic detectors at a total of 59 small ponds that are permanently filled with water at distances of around 50 to 5,000 metres from wind turbines in northern Brandenburg, a federal state in Eastern Germany.
The authors, writing in Biological Conservation said: ‘With increasing proximity to wind turbines, the activity of open space foraging bats at water bodies decreased by 53 percent and the activity of bat species adapted to hunting in narrow vegetation decreased by 63 percent.’
Bats are being forced out of their normal feeding grounds by disturbance caused by wind turbines, new research suggests (file image)
Researchers studied the acoustic signals of bats in parts of Germany with many wind turbines (file image)
Professor Voight said: ‘There is a certain tragedy in these results, because a measure to mitigate climate change has the unfortunate side effect that certain bats are less able to cope with hot and dry summers if they are displaced from their habitats by wind turbines.
‘This emphasises once again how important it is to carefully consider the siting of wind turbines so as not to play off different objectives against each other. Habitats that are very important for species conservation should be given low priority or entirely excluded as sites for wind energy production.’
The bat species studied include the common pipistrelle, the soprano pipistrelle, the western barbastelle, house bats, vesper bats, mouse-eared bats and long-eared bats.
While the cause of the bats reluctance to fly near wind turbines is unknown, the authors say it may be to do with air turbulence caused by the wind turbines, or noise.
