White tailed sea eagles cannot live with wind farms

The Smøla Wind Farm in Northern Norway, is Europe’s largest land-based wind farm and was built in two phases. Phase 1 opened in September 2002. Phase 2 opened in September 2005. The farm has been developed by the state owned Statkraft Group which is the third largest producer of power in the Nordic region, as well as the second largest producer of power based on renewable energy sources in Europe.

Phase one had 20 x 2 MW turbines and in the second phase, 48 x 2.3 MW turbines each weighing over 260 tonnes. The total rated output is 150 MW.

Because the area held the largest population of the impressive white tailed sea eagle (Europe's largest bird of prey) the developers Statkraft set up the The Sea Eagle Project at the request of the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE).

This combines the efforts of Statkraft, Norsk Hydro, the Norwegian Electricity Industry Association (EBL), the Ministry of the Environment. The Directorate for Nature Management has funded the research for 1 Million NOK this year and will increase this funding next year.

During the first phase there appeared to be no impact by the development on the eagles but with phase two there have been dramatic loss of birds impacting the turbines. Nine dead birds have been found this year, three of the dead eagles were carrying GPS transmitters and were part of the Sea Eagle Project led by Arne Follestad of NINA.

Chick numbers have also declined dramatically since the wind farm was built, with breeding pairs at the site down from 19 to one.

The sea eagle population has risen steadily since 1970, and was estimated at around 1,800 pairs in 2000. This represents around 45 per cent of Europe’s entire sea eagle population.

Evidently these large wind farms are not as environmentally friendly as their supporters assure us they are. The problem is, now we have the farm and the elctricity but not the birds.