Editor’s note: This is Part II of a two-part series. Part 1 of our discussion of wind power and wildlife, reported the number of bird deaths from well-sited, modern-design turbine designs was found to be relatively low, especially compared with impact deaths from other power sources, like buildings, power lines, vehicles and domestic cats. But does that mean we can locate high-wind coastal land – or offshore areas – and erect wind turbines and related energy-distribution facilities without considering their impact on land use and wildlife? No, it doesn’t. What does it mean then? What we don’t know We don’t know as much as we should about wind power with our coastal ecology. National Academy of Sciences’ 2007 report on wind-power’s environmental effects summarized current knowledge about the effects on wildlife and suggested how to resolve unknowns. Unfortunately, studies already done focused on the mid-Atlantic region, which has different ecologies, geography and wildlife from ours. The Wildlife Society 2007 report on wind, wildlife and habitat focused on ways to plan sites and evaluate post-construction effects of wind farms. They found lots of problems including the following: Studies to plan sites involved only one season’s data about […]