Wind turbines kill bats, but they don't have to.

Wind turbines pose a serious threat to bat populations, with hundreds of thousands of fatal collisions per year in the USA and Canada alone. This is concerning because bats are long-lived and slow to reproduce, making recovery from population declines difficult. Studies have shown that bats are attracted to turbines, and the lack of research on bat and wind turbine interactions in Australia limits our understanding of the impacts on bat populations. Curtailment, which restricts blade rotation at low wind speeds when bats are active, has been shown to be the most successful method of reducing collisions globally. Economically, losses from curtailment range from 1% to 4% of annual revenue in the northern hemisphere, while in Australia, the reduction is less than 0.1%. By incorporating site-specific weather and bat activity data, both economic and ecological losses can be further minimized. It is important to incorporate impacts into the planning stages of wind farm development and implement curtailment in Australia to prevent irreversible population declines. [Extracted from the article]