How Many Birds Have Been Killed By Solar Panels

Fish and wildlife service.

How many birds have been killed by solar panels.

It was one of 233 birds recovered from the sites of three californian desert solar power plants as part of a federal investigation. Bird deaths from solar farms have been estimated to be relatively low though a u s. Bird scientist shawn smallwood testified that one large solar farm alone the ivanpah solar panel project in. In 2016 a first of its kind study estimated that the hundreds of utility scale solar farms around the us may kill nearly 140 000 birds annually.

The laboratory s wildlife equivalents of csi stars. A rare and unusual type of solar power plant that concentrates sunlight in california is accidentally killing up to 6 000 birds every year with staff reporting that the birds keep flying into its concentrated beams of sunlight and spontaneously bursting into flames. Meanwhile as many as 28 000 birds are killed each year that s one every two minutes by the ivanpah solar plant in the mojave desert according to the u s. The waterbirds then collide with the solar panels and are critically wounded or killed.

Some solar proponents say the industry is being unfairly targeted pointing to the number of bird deaths from other causes as evidence. Scientists have estimated that between 365 million and 988. The most commonly killed birds were mourning doves 14 percent of fatalities followed by yellow rumped warblers tree swallows black throated sparrows and yellow warblers. Many of the birds that have been killed at these large solar sites are waterbirds which indicates that these birds fly to solar fields and realize too late in their descent that the solar panels are not water.

Federal biologists say about 6 000 birds die from collisions or immolation annually while chasing flying insects around the facility s three 40 story towers which catch sunlight from five square.