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This week Natural England released guidance to developers and ecologists describing the survey methods and effort which will be recommended when considering the potential impacts of wind farms on bird populations.
The document significantly extends established methods such as vantage point and breeding birds surveys and also includes further surveys such as mortality searches, the inclusion of control or reference sites, a requirement for nocturnal surveys of bird movements and potentially monitoring of both the development and reference sites for 5 - 15 years post-construction.
At this time it is not clear to what extent these guidelines will be implemented by Natural England or planning authorities.
Baker Consultants' team of ornithologists has put together a response to this document which can be downloaded below. If you would like to get involved in the discussion, please feel free to comment on this blog site, or contact Susan on s.white@bakerconsultants.co.uk
For the full guidance note from Natural England go to our earlier blog here
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Comments
Oliver Scheidegger
Wed 20 Jan 2010 09:38
In the article TIN069 in Appendix 1, the population figures are a little unclear. For example, is the article suggesting there is only about 1 Golden Eagle in UK? or 2 pairs of Chough?
Susan White
Thu 21 Jan 2010 16:35
Oliver, I agree that the numbers provided in Appendix 1 are a little unclear, I would have liked a reference to have been supplied for this data.
Checking in Birds of England, which has data for golden eagle to 2000, it shows no more than 1 pair occurring in England while the BTO states the British population is 442 pairs but does not declare how many of these birds were recorded in England. As for chough, Birds in England was published before recent returns of these birds to Cornwall so shows none being present, BTO gives 462 pairs for Britain but again I cannot say without further work how many of these were in England.
Carlos Abrahams
Thu 28 Jan 2010 14:37
Hi,
I think these are obviously English figures (it being a Natural England report....). There is just one pair of golden eagle in England in the Lake District. The quoted two pairs of chough (in Cornwall) and osprey (Rutland and Bassenthwaite) seem right.