It’s not just rightwingers – gannets hate wind farms too

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/28/rightwingers-gannets-wind-farms-turbines

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A gannet flying low over the ocean is an awesome sight. In a big swell, these brilliant-white seabirds seem to hug the contours of the waves on their epic, effortless-looking quest for fish.

So it is a shock to learn that up to 12 times more gannets could be killed by wind turbines than current figures suggest because GPS devices fitted to gannets have shown they actually fly at an average of 27 metres when searching and diving for prey. Such a height puts them on collision course with the blades of offshore windfarms.

The world’s largest colony of 70,000 pairs of northern gannets breeds on Bass Rock, in the Firth of Forth. Researchers at Leeds, Exeter and Glasgow Universities calculate that about 1,500 Bass Rock gannets could be killed each year by collisions with turbines at two planned offshore wind farms less than 30 miles from Bass Rock. This could threaten the long-term viability of this stronghold.

Clean energy or wildlife? The picture is complicated over turbines and seabirds. Studies prove that turbines chop up terns but GPS tagging shows how adult gulls (but possibly not juveniles) can weave between the blades.

Wind farms can be more wildlife friendly. Where they are built is crucial, and scientists also recommend increasing the minimum clearance for blades from 22 metres above sea-level to 30 metres to save the gannets.

This threat to our biggest native seabird shouldn’t mean a resort to more destructive technology – the government’s eagerness to frack, for instance, could imperil the biggest mainland colony of gannets at Bempton Cliffs, East Yorkshire. But it is another reminder that our appetite for energy is a huge problem in all sorts of ways. We could just use less of it.

Once in a blood moon

Blood moons – like children – make us glance again at daily marvels. When she was tiny, my daughter Esme would offer her dummy to the moon, a relic, it seemed to me, of our moon-worshipping selves. She’s now nearly four and she reminded me to admire the rising supermoon before bed on Sunday night. “I’d like to go there,” she said, as if it was a trip to the shops. I explained we’d need a spaceship. “Can we buy one from the shops?”

I suggested she study to be an astronaut and then felt terribly Pooterish for reducing our yearning for this ethereal face in the heavens to a career path. For even more boring reasons (teething toddler exhaustion), I slept through the brightest night for 33 years, but every generation has its moon worshippers and my mum gave me an eye-witness account. “I don’t know the meaning of this phrase supermoon because the moon looks super a lot of the time,” she said. When she was a child, the large September moon was the “harvest moon” followed by the “hunter’s moon” in October. And the red moon? It was bronze, said mum.

The MP reborn as a bug

All political careers end in failure but some end more ignominiously than others, such as Elliot Morley, the ex-Labour MP who was imprisoned for expenses fraud. But in one of Britain’s most exciting new nature reserves, Canvey Wick, in the Thames Estuary, lurks a memorial to Morley, a former environment minister who actually cared about wildlife. Canvey Wick, described as “a brownfield rainforest”, is home to a rare beetle with an elongated snout now known as the Morley weevil. Thanks to Buglife, the RSPB and the Land Trust, this endangered invertebrate should scuttle around as a more enduring legacy than that left by many politicians.