Wind Farms, Bad For Birds?

"Wind farms kill a lot more birds daily than are probably going to be killed in this oil spill."
--George Will, Washington Post columnist 5/9/10

Hmm, does he have a point? No. True, wind turbines do affect avian populations, but they're not the dire threat that oil mavericks might have you believe they are.

The Audubon Society supports wind power.

This peer-reviewed report examines number of birds killed by various energy sources.

The Exxon Valdez spill is estimated to have killed a quarter million birds outright, plus reduced food availability and destroyed habitat for survivors and several future generations (there's still 20,000 gallons of oil on Alaska's shores, 21 years later!).

Here's a chart estimating annual bird deaths:

Building strikes: 100 million to 1 billion
Car strikes: 200 to 300 million
Communication towers: 4 to 50 million
Power lines: around 75 million
Cats: 365 million (1 million per day)
Wind farms: 100,000 to 300,000

Note that cats are a far bigger threat to avian populations than wind farms (but we all knew that from watching Sylvester and Tweety Bird cartoons).