Could saving an orange-bellied bird warm the planet?
That’s the subtitle of the editorial in today’s The Australian.
The piece begins:
“A LITTLE bird is causing big trouble in Victoria. At issue is the endangered orange-bellied parrot and the blocking of a $220 million Gippsland wind farm by federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell 580 days after it was approved by the Bracks Government. According to Senator Campbell, the 52-turbine wind farm planned at Gippsland’s Bald Hill is too near where the birds spend part of the year and might – again, might – kill one of them a year.
The piece finished with the comment:
“The conflict over the Gippsland wind farm is emblematic of a broader conflict within the environmental movement, one that stems from the inherent bias against human progress and towards NIMBY-ism that is at the philosophical heart of the greens. Environmentalists in Australia have used the threat of extinction to try to stop everything from gold mines to resorts to, most famously, logging operations in Tasmania. … Whether politically or ecologically minded, Senator Campbell’s decision was a poor one that deserves to be reversed immediately.”
So the Minister cares about parrots as well as whales?
And I wonder, how were we really going to benefit from the wind farm? Are wind farms in Australia really going to stop global warming?
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The decision has nothing to do with saving the parrot and eveything to do with saving a marginal Liberal seat.
If it wasn’t a wind farm, it was say – a McDonalds, would everybody still be upset?
If we are to have a policy of clean green environmentally sensitive & sustainable developments then obviously this wind farm fails to meet some of the criteria laid down by ‘conservationists.’
I have seen developments held up for years and years because of a grass orchid that is classed as being endangered.
But it gets worse, a $400M development could be scrapped because of a moth that lives for 4 days
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18737526-2702,00.html
I it amazing how concerned about birds people get when wind farms are mentioned. Its OK to cut down the trees that they use for homes or destroy wetlands where they get food but you can’t build a wind turbine.
Anyway I guess they picked the wrong spot if bird conservation is the real reason. I find myself agreeing with rog about the McDonalds. I have seen huge mansions with massive picture windows, that kill more birds that a wind turbine, erected in very sensitive spots with no real objection.
So what are you saying Elmer Mcfudd, wind farms and other green projects are to be free from the requirements that we normal folk have to comply with?
Mainstream Australian media is full of pathetic drivel. Just reading it makes us all more stupid. Yesterday’s report from Crikey:
4. The political uses of a little green parrot
Sean Dooley, comedy writer and author of the birdwatching classic The Big Twitch, is a regular volunteer in the annual Orange-bellied Parrot surveys. He writes:
As a dedicated, some would say obsessive, twitcher (a type of hard core birdwatcher) I have spent many a winter’s day freezing my nuts off on the western shores of Port Phillip Bay looking for the endangered Orange-bellied Parrot [see right], usually with very little success.
Turns out I should have been hanging out with Federal Environment Minister Senator Ian Campbell, who suddenly seems to have taken a big interest in this little green parrot. According to The Age this morning he’s shutting down a $220 million windfarm proposal at Bald Hills in South Gippsland on the basis that, though the Orange-bellied Parrot has never actually been recorded there, one might turn up and it may get caught in the spinning blades of the wind turbines.
Strange for a guy who didn’t bat an eye when it came to building a detention centre on Christmas Island smack in the middle of the breeding habitat for the last thousand pairs of Abbot’s Booby left in the world.
And this level of concern about the OBP from a member of the same party as former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett, who once called the OBP a “trumped-up corella” when he wanted to relocate Coode Island right in the middle of one of the parrot’s most crucial wintering grounds.
The fact is that while the OBP, which breeds in South West Tassie and migrates to the Victorian coast in winter, has had a relatively stable breeding population over the past decade, it has virtually disappeared from its traditional wintering grounds. The birds must be going somewhere because they keep on returning to breed every year, but despite extensive searches by me and scores of other birdwatchers we’re buggered if we know where. It seems Ian Campbell must know something we don’t.
Which is great, I’m all for protecting this little critter, so if the wind farm actually does threaten its continued existence then good on Ian Campbell. One question though, why then did he not put the kybosh on another wind farm project at Yambuk in Western Victoria where real live actual OBPs have been seen regularly within the last few years?
Perhaps given this is a pet project of the Bracks government that has met stiff local resistance in a marginal seat, the type of OBP that Campbell has in mind is of the overtly, blatant political kind.
rog “So what are you saying Elmer Mcfudd, wind farms and other green projects are to be free from the requirements that we normal folk have to comply with?”
No not at all. What I am saying is that this new found concern for birds should extend to housing developments that fill in wetlands. It also should apply to all large buildings with plate glass windows that kill millions of birds.
Modern large turbines are far less of a risk to birds that the small fast turning early ones that this myth that windturbines are bird killers was started. How many tall skyscrapers have you heard of being blocked in development over concern for migratory birds?
BTW I think name calling is a bit beneath even you – if you don’t like Ender you can call me Steve Gloor if you like.
Ender, you’ve raised the other half of this issue. Having watched few wind tubines spinning, I’ve always been curious why a species of bird, with it’s ability to survive predation by fast-moving raptors, would apparently be unable to avoid the the blade of a windmill. Is this whole issue based upon an urban myth?
Wind power can never close a power station of any sort; the fallibility of the “wind supply” necessitates full capacity (plus contingency reserve) back up from a power station if there is not to be a power cut, or risk thereof. The small amount of power derived from them is more expensive than any other method and even this is subsidised by the government. ‘For electricity, evidence from the Department of Trade and Industry shows that UK wind farms deliver less than one quarter of their full capacity – just 24.1% in 2003. So, for every 100 turbines erected you get the electricity equivalent of just 25 of them. To add insult to injury, the power produced is not available on demand, is unreliable and is unpredictable’. The situation is little better with regard to reducing CO2 emissions.
Will wind farms save on CO2 emissions? It would require about 833 square kilometres (300 square miles or 192,000 acres ) of wind turbines to equal one conventional 1,000 MW gas fired plant That’s the area, of a mile-wide swath of land extending from Sydney to Mount Kosciusko via Cooma, plus another 50 k’s. These wind farm would require around 16 million tons of steel reinforced concrete (a major source of CO2) plus around 2,640,000, tons of steel just for the turbine towers. (Talk about environmental disasters) And at the end of their lifespan, who would pay for the removal of 2,640,000 tons of steel and 16 million tons of concrete plus thousands of kilometres of cable?
By clearing trees and plants for wind farm sites and access roads, sub stations etc. we have just eliminated the major cleanser of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. So we clear out our life giving plants and trees to build wind farms, which will have disastrous effects on our landscapes, to save on CO2 emissions which the trees do far better, and the trees even throw in oxygen to boot. How stupid is that, especially when a modern gas fired plant could be built on an existing industrial site of around 15 acres with little impact on the surrounding environment.
The chairman of the energy policy committee in the Danish Parliament has described Denmark’s reliance on wind as ‘a terribly expensive disaster for denmark, they caused the cost of electricity to double in Denmark, but failed to reduce the level of CO2 emitted and they ruin the tourism potential of vast areas.”
There are over 40 action groups in the UK, National Conferences Against the Construction of Wind farms. 100 German Professors signed a document protesting against wind power – none of these support the view that wind energy fosters a favourable opinion.
Germany has over 17, 500 wind turbines degrading the countryside, yet despite the proliferation of turbines “less than 1% of the electricity needed is produced, or only slightly more than one-thousandth of the total energy produced.” Equally, “the contribution made by the use of wind energy to the avoidance of greenhouse gases is somewhere between one and two thousandths. Wind energy is therefore of no significance whatever. ”
Wind farms are an expensive and inefficient way of generating sustainable energy. Critics said it would be cheaper and more environmentally efficient to insulate old houses or to renew existing power stations.
ksaloz
Never one to rely exclusively on a media report, could I be reading correctly that the Federal Minister for the Environment has stopped a $220 million Gippsland wind farm due to a report that stated that the wind turbines might kill one orange bellied parrot a year.
First I looked at the Minister’s media release at http://www.deh.gov.au/minister/env/2006/mr05apr206.html and yes it does say “While the report found that the impact of wind turbine collisions on the Orange-bellied Parrot may be small, up to one bird death per year, it concluded that almost any negative impact on the species could be sufficient to tip the balance against its continued existence.”
The Minister also goes onto quote the reports conclusions:
“Given that the Orange-bellied Parrot is predicted to have an extremely high probability of extinction in its current situation, almost any negative impact on the species could be sufficient to tip the balance against its continued existence. In this context it may be argued that any avoidable deleterious effect – even the very minor predicted impacts of turbine collisions – should be prevented.” Wind farm collision risk for birds “Cumulative risks for threatened and migratory species, p47 (Orange-bellied Parrot report)
So the next thing I did was to read page 47 and find this quote at http://www.deh.gov.au/epbc/publications/pubs/wind-farm-bird-risk-orangebelliedparrot.pdf
I was amazed that the paragraph continued and the very next sentence states
“Our analyses suggest that such action will have extremely limited beneficial value to conservation of the parrot without addressing very much greater adverse effects that are currently operating against it.”
This section of the report related to the cumulative effects of wind farms across the whole range of the bird’s territory not just the Gippsland’s Bald Hill wind turbine. Eg the report includes Wind farms on the West Coast of Tasmania, King Island and along the Victorian Coast.
So what does the report say about Bald Hill, it reports that the utilization of birds has been studied at the site, and found that NO Orange-bellied Parrots were recorded, for its model of types and annual duration of Orange-bellied Parrot interaction with the wind farm it stated “Possible migration passage only” with up to 15 birds a year making a migration passage. Modeled survival rates worst case at Bald Hills was 0.9999001. Presumably you apply mathematics to this figure and the 15 birds that might use the area as a migration passage, and come up with a mortality rate for Bald Hill. This appears significantly less than the one bird death per year across the whole range of wind farms built or proposed across its total habitat.
No wonder the Australian commented “No wonder a federal study said anyone wishing to save this parrot would be best off addressing a host of other threats first. Investing in a feral animal reduction program, for example, would bring benefits not just for the orange-bellied parrot but other native wildlife as well.”
Of course don’t forget “Environmentalists in Australia have used the threat of extinction to try to stop everything from gold mines to resorts to, most famously, logging operations in Tasmania”
In this case the orange bellied parrot spends six months of the year in Tasmania, compared to a couple of hours it might spend flying past the Bald hill site each year. However before you all start wanting to save Tassie’s forest again, its worth comparing a map of the breeding grounds of the parrot to one of the reserves that cover 42% of the State’s land mass, you will find that the Orange Bellied Parrot lives in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area where of course sustainable timber harvesting has been totally banned for decades.
The Australian is spot on to question this decision that will put at risk the whole wind farm industry in SE Australia, causing chaos to investment in renewable energy technology and putting at risk thousands of jobs within the industry including many in North West Tasmania.
Campbell obviously knows wind farms are a crock. The orange bellied parrot argument is just a convenient way to avoid a wind farm and still keep in good with the doctor’s wives.
Nothing to do with wind farms being viable or not. Simply an attempt to defend a marginal NIMBY Liberal voters’ seat.
k – “Wind power can never close a power station of any sort; the fallibility of the “wind supply”
necessitates full capacity (plus contingency reserve) back up from a power station if there is not to be a power cut, or risk thereof. The small amount of power derived from them is more expensive than any other method and even this is subsidised by the government.”
2 things here. Wind power tends to naturally follow peak periods on average. Also wind power is becoming cost competitive with coal and gas. If you in England then perhaps you might be glad of wind power as your gas prices have doubled. The capacity factor of wind is well known and is nothing new. In prime sites it can be as high as 30%.
“Will wind farms save on CO2 emissions? It would require about 833 square kilometres (300 square miles or 192,000 acres ) of wind turbines to equal one conventional 1,000 MW gas fired plant That’s the area, of a mile-wide swath of land extending from Sydney to Mount Kosciusko via Cooma, plus another 50 k’s.”
Absolute and complete garbage. Modern wind turbines can be built to 5MW with larger ones on the way. In this case you would need 200 to generate 1000 MW and 600 if the capacity factor was taken into account. As most wind farms have 50 to 100 turbines and cattle can graze under them there would be no requirement to clear land.
“How stupid is that, especially when a modern gas fired plant could be built on an existing industrial site of around 15 acres with little impact on the surrounding environment.”
However you have not taken into account the mining and exploration of the gas that destroys parts of the world not in you backyard. Nor the bloodshed and warfare required to maintain gas supplies in a hostile world. Not to mention the thousands of kilometers of pipelines to bring the gas to the plant. The power plant is the lease part of it.
“Wind farms are an expensive and inefficient way of generating sustainable energy. Critics said it would be cheaper and more environmentally efficient to insulate old houses or to renew existing power stations.”
If you would like to read about the problems facing Europe’s gas supplies read this:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/4/6/234320/6282#more
Good luck getting the gas back from China.
The same could be said of coal and gas. It is cheaper and more environmentally friendly to conserve power and this must be done as well as new forms of generating power.
Ender
Cinders – “The Australian is spot on to question this decision that will put at risk the whole wind farm industry in SE Australia, causing chaos to investment in renewable energy technology and putting at risk thousands of jobs within the industry including many in North West Tasmania.”
Agree with you. Addidionally there is no clear evidence that modern wind turbines are a huge danger to birds. Recent studies have concluded that there is very little danger, certainly no more that power lines. I don’t see the minister proposing to remove all towers and power lines over the breeding range of the parrot.
Some research
http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&issn=0003-0031&volume=143&issue=01&page=0041
http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&issn=0003-0031&volume=139&issue=01&page=0029
http://www.springerlink.com/(tpbije55ajjpvdn05qcjjcew)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,8,12;journal,31,155;linkingpublicationresults,1:100125,1
quote from the last one
“Soaring birds can detect the presence of the turbines because they change their flight direction when they fly near the turbines and their abundance did not seem to be affected. This is also supported by the low amount of dead birds we found in the whole study period in the wind farm area. More studies will be necessary after and before the construction of wind farms to assess changes in passerine populations.
Windfarms do not appear to be more detrimental to birds than other man-made structures.”
And in Australia:
http://www.thewind.info/downloads/myths_and_facts.pdf
An interesting statistic from this is that domestic cats kill about 100 million birds per year. Perhaps the minister can also ban cats to preserve birds.
While the environment minister is breaking wind over parrots, will he crush mines too?
Parrot edict aids Greens in ore fight
Paige Taylor
April 10, 2006
FEDERAL Environment Minister Ian Campbell’s decision to block a wind farm for the sake of the orange-bellied parrot has raised the hopes of environmentalists claiming an even rarer bird is threatened by an iron ore mine proposed for the Pilbara.
Senator Campbell will be asked to rule on whether the night parrot is threatened by miner Andrew Forrest’s proposal to extract 572 million tonnes of iron ore at Cloud Break, about 3km from a lone sighting of three of the critically endangered birds last April.
Seen only twice last century, the night parrot was presumed extinct for many years until a dead bird was found on a Queensland roadside in 1990.
West Australian Greens MP Giz Watson said Senator Campbell had set an important precedent last week with his decision to block the wind farm at Bald Hills in Victoria’s South Gippsland and must also halt the iron ore mine.
“It’s critical that the minister does act … the night parrot is much rarer than the orange-bellied parrot and one would hope that would mean that the area is conserved rather than mined,” she said.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18766382-30417,00.html
just confirming what was discussed above:
Parrots not out of woods
Rick Wallace and Matthew Denholm
April 08, 2006
THE endangered orange-bellied parrot – used by the Howard Government to block a proposed wind farm in a Victorian marginal seat – proved no barrier to federal approval of four other wind farms in the bird’s habitat.
..Victorian Premier Steve Bracks suggested yesterday the wind farm decision might have been influenced by political donations from energy companies. Official returns reveal two $4000 donations to the West Australian branch of the Liberal Party from Chevron Texaco and Griffen Coal, as well as $2000 from Woodside.
Senator Campbell, described by Mr Bracks yesterday as wacky, promised to stop the locally unpopular wind farm in the 2004 election, helping wrest the seat of McMillan from Labor.
This week, he rejected the project, although no orange-bellied parrot has been seen within 50km of the site.
Labor environment spokesman Anthony Albanese yesterday highlighted four wind farms that the federal Government had allowed in the parrot’s territory. He said the approval of the farms – at Woolnorth and Jims Plains in Tasmania, Portland in Victoria and Port MacDonnell in South Australia – showed the Bald Hills decision was “all about politics and not about parrots”.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18748071-30417,00.html
..”no orange-bellied parrot has been seen within 50km of the site”
Aha! obviously no vissible evidence of existence = does not exist, OK?
Of course the opinion of the ALP is not political but evidence based isnt it..
http://www.birdsaustralia.com.au/birds/obp.html
Precautionary principle under attack by proponents of same?
Delicious irony
Of course greenies believe that they have the moral authority to conduct their activities in an area that has been listed by the Department of Sustainability’s “Biodiversity Action Planning for Gippsland Bioregion, Tarwin/Powlett Zone” as a “Biodiversity Asset” of “National Significance”.
The Australian Bird Atlas’ records 280 species of birds for the 1degree grid block covering Bald Hills.
In 1982 the Fisheries and Wildlife Division wrote that in creating the Bald Hills wetland it would be “a wetland of great importance to a wide range of waterbirds. The location is on the flyway used by many species moving between eastern and western Victoria and will attract many birds as it will be one of the few wetlands in this region.”
..“The proposed wetland is close to the Tarwin River and Anderson Inlet; both important feeding grounds for water birds and will create a safe roosting and breeding site, at present, are very scarce in this region.”
The U. K. Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said;
“the RSPB recognises that inappropriately sited wind farms can cause problems for birds. It is precisely because of this that since 1998 the society has objected to 26 wind farm proposals (on and offshore) and has raised concerns about a further 29…
…The RSPB strongly supports the sustainable development of wind power and other forms of renewable energy as a means of helping to tackle climate change, which we regard as the biggest long-term threat to the environment. The available evidence, from the UK and elsewhere, suggests that wind farms that are appropriately sited do not pose a significant hazard for birds. The RSPB will, and does, object to development proposals, including wind farms, that threaten important birds and their habitats.”
“100 German Professors signed a document protesting against wind power” looking at the names not all of them would know all that much about wind power – the first guy off the rank – Udo Ackermann, is a Gem Design teacher in a German school of jewellery. It was supposedly written in 1998, nearly ten years ago, since then Germany has increased the number of wind farms, adding nearly 2000 MW last year to have a capacity of over 18000 MW.
Also “less than 1% of the electricity needed is produced, or only slightly more than one-thousandth of the total energy produced.” line is 10 years out of date – wind produces 6% of Germany’s power.
k – what else is 10 years out of date in what you have written?
What is wrong with the elected representitive expressing the views of his/her constituants?
They must surely know the majority view in their electorate!
Look at Bob Carr when some innocent said that Kurnell would be a great site for a wind power station.
He squashed that idea within hours!
If the city dwellers want to reduce the CO2 burden,how about you switch off the city lights.
You would actually see natures light show!
most definitely NOT an example of the precautionary principle at work rog, you’ve failed to comprehend the comments above or read the original article properly and you’re talking out your arse again.
Try to address the issues properly stinky without having to resort to petty and shallow adhominen attacks.
Wind power as generated by turbines with large blades has only recently been discovered to have a significant and avoidable impact on birds and bats. Better siting will provide most of the solution to this problem.
The difficulty is that it is very hard to count birds and bats killed by wind turbines. Predators remove kills quickly and given the size of the turbines and given the maximum blade tip speeds of around 300kph bats and birds killed can end up a considerable distance from the turbines.
Surprisingly birds like white throated needle tails, a large swallow-like bird that migrates annually to Australia feeding and sleeping on the wing, have been among the kills recorded. These birds are not only supreme ‘flyers’ but also use a form of echo location to catch their prey.
Similarly with bats it is surprising they get killed by turbines. In West Virginia the bat mortality generated by turbines only came to light when students camped below turbines and used dogs to find more than 300 dead and injured bats from a couple of dozen turbines over a few moths. This was in 2004.
These problems were not predicted, though it has been known for some time that birds have been struck by blades – but monitoring has been by turbines owners and those paid to host turbines – neither with the incentive report kills.
Companies that build wind turbines seek the most prominent locations to remind potential customers to ‘tick’ the green energy box on their power bill.
The Victorian State Government simply provided a wind atlas to these companies showing where the most reliable winds were as a guide to siting. The same reliable winds may also be used by migrating birds and bats.
Bird migration routes and travelling heights are also poorly understood. The most common known migrations are of species that arrive in flocks in the Australian Summer and depart in the autumn, also in flocks and most often at night.
The conditions at the time of departure and arrival determine what height and to an extent what route these flocks travel at.
To the bird in question, the Orange Bellied Parrot, it is the rarest of 17 species of national and international significance found likely to be killed by turbines if constructed at Bald Hills wetland.
No-one could be reasonably expected to predict the extent and nature of this problem. Now that it has been identified far more care must be taken with the siting of wind turbines and State Governments have a responsibility to decide where wind turbines should not be located.
Some basic rules for siting turbines could be –
1. Not within 30 kilometres of the coast, wetland or lakes. This safety margin is to allow for the full range of weather conditions that may bring migratory birds and bats within the range of spinning blades.
2. Not on ridges frequented by birds of prey from a given region, (not all ridge lines are used as ‘lofting areas’.)
3. That alternative energy consumers and property owners, who are paid for having turbines on their land, pay for and allow monitoring of existing turbines for birds and bat kills.
4. That turbines that are found to cause kills (by monitoring) are shutdown for the high risk periods and that alternative energy consumers cover these costs.
5. The available infra -red monitoring technology by used extensively for monitoring of sites for proposed wind farms before agreements with land owners to site turbines are reached and monitoring of existing turbine sites.
The very low numbers of Orange Bellied Parrots, less than 200, makes them vulnerable to even normal predation. The spend winter on the increasingly rare Victorian saltmarsh fringes scattered along the coast, as small and hard to identify. The estimate of the blades of the proposed Bald Hills windfarm being likely to kill one Orange Bellied Parrot per year are better understood as there is a good chance in 30 years that a flock of 30 will be killed.
There are a wide range of issues regarding wind turbines, but the impact on birds and bats is new and unpredicted as may be amplified by the area of turbulence around blade tips that could be equally fatal to small birds and bats aa blade strike.
Better siting will avoid most of the bird/bat interaction issues. Barrel shaped turbines currently be developed may solve this problem completely.
How high does the orange belly parrot fly?
this windfarm can be built anywhere else. this bird cant be built again. no. because its endangered. it might never come back. this article gives a laugh at the animal. its people like you that are the reason the worlds going to suffer from global warming one day.
this windfarm can be built anywhere else. this bird cant be built again. no. because its endangered. it might never come back. this article gives a laugh at the animal. its people like you that are the reason the worlds going to suffer from global warming one day.
this windfarm can be built anywhere else. this bird cant be built again. no. because its endangered. it might never come back. this article gives a laugh at the animal. its people like you that are the reason the worlds going to suffer from global warming one day.