Letter from Brian Harrington on Birds
and Nahant Causeway Wind Turbine Project
To: Whomever Is Concerned
From: Brian Harrington, Retired Senior Scientist, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences,
Date: November 18, 2008
Re: Wind Turbine Proposals for Nahant Causeway
I am concerned that a wind energy project proposed for the Nahant Causeway would lead to exceptionally high bird mortality due to its location between two bodies of water, i.e. in heavily used bird flightlines. I am writing as a recently retired bird biologist, with more than 30 years of research experience with the Manomet Center for Conservation Biology. I also am the Principal Coordinator of the International Shorebird Surveys.
Wind turbine proposals often raise concern among bird enthusiasts, in good part due to their reputation as ‘bird-killers’. Much of this reputation dates back to early wind energy projects that were situated in poor locations with respect to bird activity. Today, many worthwhile wind projects are more carefully located, and offer relatively little threat to birds. But in the present case, the proposed 60 wind turbines along the 1.5 mile long Nahant Causeway would likely be major bird-killers. This is largely because the Nahant Causeway is bordered by Nahant Bay on the east and Lynn Harbor on the west, i.e. directly in the line of travel birds follow in commuting between the 2 water bodies. This would include a variety of shorebird, tern, gull and waterfowl species, potentially more than 60 species.
The proposed turbines will be on light poles along the length of the causeway, on both sides of the road. The height of the poles is 45 feet and turbine blades 16.4 feet in diameter.
Placing structures in bird flight-lines can lead to high mortality. As an example from my personal experience, I cite an electric power line (a relatively modest structure as compared to the wind project discussed here) running along a causeway with waters of a lagoon on both sides, where I worked for 5 seasons in Puerto Rico. I and college students working with me made a special effort to count numbers of birds killed by collision with the lines once a day. I have not carefully gone through my notes, but my recollection is that we found up to 20 birds a day that had collided with the line, and more typically found 6-8 per day. Likely others died but were not found (eg. drifted away or were carried away by crabs, vultures, etc.). Based on our counts, I conservatively estimate that roughly 300 birds a month were being killed. Most of them were shorebirds (sandpipers and plovers), but some herons and egrets, several waterfowl, some terns (even though scarce at the location), and one flamingo (1 of three we ever saw in the area).
About Brian Harrington. . .
Manomet Center For Conservation Science Retired Senior Scientist Brian Harrington has been studying the distribution and coastal ecology of shorebirds since 1972, focusing on migration and southern South American wintering areas. Brian, working with hundreds of cooperators, has led research on shorebird use of coastal habitat at migration stopover sites, as well as identifying major migration sites of shorebirds throughout the United States and southern Western Hemisphere nations. Much of his research has focused on the Red Knot, which illustrates many of the conservation issues he has studied. His book, The Flight of the Red Knot, published in 1996, chronicles the migratory flight of the far-flung Red Knots, from the Arctic Circle to the tip of South America and back, and has been called “an informative and wonderfully written account of an ornithological marvel.”
Brian is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University, and holds an M.A. in zoology from the University of South Florida. He has been lead instructor in numerous Shorebird Management Training Workshops, worked with the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network to develop programs for providing habitats essential to shorebirds, and partnered with the U.S. and Canadian Wildlife Services and the U.S.G.S to examine shorebird population changes in shorebirds over the past two decades. He recently has focused research on growing habitat conflicts between human recreation and shorebird habitat needs in coastal regions.
Click here to find out more about the Manomet Bird Center http://www.manomet.org
Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences
PO Box 1770
Manomet, MA 02345
Safer Waters in Massachusetts (SWIM)
c/o Northeastern University Marine Science Center. East Point, 430 Nahant Road, Nahant, MA 01908
nahantswim@verizon.net
www.nahant.org/community/swim.shtml
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