ECOLOGY - MITIGATION FOR BIRDS PRO-ACTIVE APPROACH
Beyond the requirement to simply mitigate impacts, though, the best developers now adopt a pro-active approach to habitat restoration and enhancement, as part of their overall development plans.
ROBUST PREDICTIONS, MONITORING AND RECORD KEEPING Any consultancy must deliver robust predictions that satisfy planners and environmentalists. Naturally, construction staging can also be planned to avoid building activity during high-risk periods.
Thereafter, carefully planned monitoring and record keeping at operational sites will discharge planning conditions and reveal future solutions to projects further up the pipeline. Freely sharing the findings will benefit the industry as a whole.
SCOTTISH WINDFARM BIRD STEERING GROUP
At present, the Scottish Windfarm Bird Steering Group, whose stakeholders include RSPB, SNH, and Scottish Renewables is working on collating all bird data from wind farm construction and post-construction into a single database to better inform the industry.
This database, when launched into the public domain, will provide a valuable resource, feeding back into the process of impact assessment and mitigation design at future developments. Naturally such an exercise is dependent upon input and collaboration from wind farm owners.
Perhaps this is no more evident than in the upland settings in which wind energy has for obvious reasons focused.
RESTORATION WORK
Carefully planned habitat management in such areas can involve the restoration of the UK’s critically important peatland habitats. This leads to net improvements to historically damaged bird habitats and biodiversity in general, as well as to the management of carbon dioxide, as properly restored and re-activated peatlands will begin once again to act as carbon stores.
Against a background of shrinking public funding, onshore wind farms thus represent an increasingly important route to such restoration work.
LEADING ADVOCATE
Atmos Consulting is a leading advocate of this approach and of sharing best practice. It is active in several projects that tie wind energy developments to habitat restoration plans that offer more than like-for-like mitigation.
Perhaps the benefits of such schemes will help planners to re-evaluate some of the historic concerns about wind farms and bird populations?
Atmos Consulting
www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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