Birregurra’s Jorda Burnett has researced the impact a proposed wind farm at Mount Gellibrand would have on brolgas and other birds.
BIRREGURRA residents are concerned a Colac district wind farm will harm brolgas and migratory birds.
The Burnett family liveS at Birregurra, three kilometres from the nearest proposed turbine at the Mount Gellibrand wind farm.
Nigel, Tanya and Jorda Burnett say they’ve been campaigning to protect brolgas since they found out the wind farm received approval about 12 months ago.
“Unfortunately for us we knew about the permit a bit later on,” Jorda said.
“We’ve been writing to ministers, writing to DSE and to council,” she said.
Jorda said her family’s main concerns included wind turbines being in the path of migratory birds, the disruption of brolga habitat and the proximity of the turbines to the Western District Lakes Ramsar site.
The Ramsar convention recognises the Western District Lakes as an internationally significant wetland because of the number of migratory birds visiting from Asian countries.
“In our opinion, all birds will be exposed to trauma by turbine blades and overhead distribution lines,” Jorda said.
“We’re just trying to highlight these concerns, we are not against renewable energy.
“We think there are better places for wind farms.”
A Birregurra family fears a wind farm threatens the district’s brolgas.
Acciona Energy is building the 63-turbine farm, after building wind farms at Waubra near Ballarat and Gunning in New South Wales.
Acciona’s engineering, construction and operations director Brett Wickham said the organisation had a bat and bird plan in place.
“I guess just like any of our other sites we take it very seriously,” Mr Wickham said.
He said the bat and avifauna management plan took into account the brolgas’ habitats, as well as indigenous and migratory birds.
“That’s been implemented at this stage, not necessarily
because a brolga has impacted with a wind farm, it’s that we don’t know how they’re going to interact with them,” Mr Wickham said.
Mr Wickham said Acciona would monitor the birds’ behaviour during construction and when the turbines were working.
“If they’re displaying risky behaviour then we actually have to shut down turbines,” he said.
“Our intention is not to have them hit.”
The bird and bat of Acciona??? So does this mean that the fewer birds that killed the better – never mind if the local population has almost vanished…
Acciona already know there will be a problem with Brolga and raptors at this wind farm. They have admitted killing 6 eagles in the first two years of Waubra operation at the 30 turbines that they are sporadically monitoring. They have omitted three months data in the first year in these figures, and refuse to disclose what birds were killed in those three months, so we could expect the truth would show a lot higher number of eagle deaths. If you extrapolate the admitted deaths over the total time frame of operation and the total number of turbines that are not being monitored at all, the eagle death toll alone will exceed 20 birds. This number of eagle deaths at Woolnorth in Tasmania shut down the wind farm until real time monitoring and shut down procedures were put in place. Yet nothing is done at Waubra, and DSE just appear to say it is an acceptable number of deaths.
The deaths may reduce in time, mainly because the population has been exterminated.
And by the way, Brolga deaths have been reported at Waubra, and Brolga have been permanently displaced from their nesting and feeding home ranges but Acciona and DSE refuse to own up to the fact. USA research projects analyzing the interaction of cranes (Brolga family) with wind farms have proven that wind farms should not be built within 5 to 8 km of brolga nest home ranges and flocking sites, yet Acciona and other wind farms are building within 700m of Brolga nests, and DSE are doing nothing to stop them.
In fact DSE data has been removed from the DSE Atlas in many cases to make the wind farm consultants reports look more believable.
Shame on you wind industry for not telling the truth and shame on you DSE for not making them.