Draft National Wind Farm Development Guidelines - July 2010

Searches for dead birds and bats around turbines should be undertaken to a rigorous
regime that accounts for variables in detectability of carcasses. Practical considerations
and limits on detectability will necessitate that the study is designed to obtain an index of
mortalities rather than an absolute count. Careful consideration will be required to the
following aspects in design of a regime to locate and document fatalities:
• frequency of searching;
• proportion of turbines to be searched;
• radius around turbine to be searched;
• influence of vegetation within searched areas;
• potential efficiencies of human observers or dogs;
• accounting for carcass removal by scavengers; and,
• accounting for injured birds or bats that might move prior to death.
The information outlined above to be gathered in the course of monitoring the operational
wind farm should also be collected with the purpose of informing strategies to deal with
mortality events if they occur and particularly if they exceed pre-determined thresholds for
impacts on the populations of key taxa, as determined in the pre-construction assessment
stage (see Evaluation of adaptive management aimed at further reduction of impacts
page 132).
Evaluation of adaptive management aimed at further reduction of impacts
Principal question:
Purpose:
Methods:
Can adaptive management further reduce impacts
To further reduce or mitigate any validated impacts occurring during
operation of the wind farm.
Site- and species-specific adaptive techniques to be tested for their efficacy
and adopted if demonstrably effective and necessary.
Reduction and mitigation of impacts will be most effective and less costly when
implemented at the planning and design phases of the development through informed
site selection and wind farm design, however a bird and or bat management plan will
generally be required for any wind farm where key species may be impacted. This plan
should be based on information obtained for the site prior to commissioning of the turbines.
It is essential that the plan has capacity to adapt at any time according to information
obtained at the facility once it is in operation. Studies to determine the actual impacts of
the facility will be designed to that end (see Determination of actual impacts on key bird &
bat populations, page 130).
Whilst it will be usual for a wind farm to be approved only when an assessment undertaken
as per the preceding steps of these Guidelines indicates that an ‘acceptable’ level of
impact on any key species might occur, results of investigation of effects of the
operational wind farm will be used to inform strategies for further reduction of any impacts
found to be occurring.
An adaptive approach to this management is vital because experience at the operating
wind farm may differ from what was forecast prior to its commissioning. This may happen
for a number of reasons, for example:
• Despite pre-construction assessment, some uncertainties about behavioural responses
of birds or bats to the wind farm at the particular location will be inevitable and may
prove to contribute to a greater or lesser impact than anticipated.
Page 132 Draft National Wind Farm Development Guidelines – 2 July 2010