Wind is an excellent, eco-friendly source of power, but the turbines sometimes also kill wildlife. It's known as a green-green dilemma. At South Africa's Excelsior Wind Farm, Mauricia Martin helps protect endangered bird species like the Black Harrier.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Wind power is climate-friendly, but the blades can be deadly to birds, such as the Cape Vulture
00:08and the Black Harrier, South Africa's rarest endemic bird of prey.
00:14It's Mauritius Martin's job to protect them.
00:17The former teaching assistant has retrained and is now employed at Excelsior Wind Farm,
00:24located about 100 km east of Cape Town.
00:28The 32.5 megawatt wind project generates enough electricity to power about 16,000 households.
00:38As one of nine biodiversity monitors, Mauritius Martin scans the landscape for birds.
00:45If one approaches, she makes a phone call to get the nearby turbine to shut down.
00:53The timing depends on the species.
00:56For the Black Harrier, it must be two kilometres before we call over.
01:01It must be two kilometres for us to do over there, so that the operator can be on standby.
01:06When it's coming near the turbine, one kilometre, we put off the turbine.
01:11Over 80% of South Africa's electricity still comes from coal-fired stations.
01:17Much of this infrastructure is dilapidated.
01:20Frequent power outages put a strain on the economy and make everyday life more difficult.
01:27South Africa now has about 1,000 wind turbines, intended to provide more and cleaner energy.
01:35But that comes at a price.
01:37This bird, which presumably flew into a turbine tower, is one casualty.
01:43BirdLife South Africa have been collecting data on all of the surveys for fatalities of every single wind farm.
01:50And there's about 32 operational wind farms as we speak in 2024, end of 2024 now.
01:56And we know that they kill a lot of birds.
01:59The average is about four to five birds per turbine per year across all of those 32 wind farms.
02:08Back to Marisha Martin. If she sounds the alarm, the turbine is only switched off briefly.
02:14Once the bird has passed, operations then resume again.
02:19The shutdown on demand programme has been running for five years, with almost no loss in energy production.
02:26No one else had really done anything like this before, so we factored in quite a high percentage.
02:31And we've been very pleasantly surprised at how little it affects the bottom line.
02:36Essentially there's less than 1% revenue loss as a result of running this programme.
02:41Today, new wind farms have to meet strict environmental standards.
02:46The Excelsior wind farm is near black harrier breeding sites.
02:51Today, getting it built would be challenging due to the mitigation measures that have to be put in place.
02:58Conservationist Odette Smith welcomes efforts to reduce bird fatalities, but says more needs to be done.
03:05The wind farm has, and started with, a fantastic programme called shutdown on demand,
03:11which they are implementing, and they are probably implementing it better than any other wind farm in the country.
03:18But despite that, because a harrier is a relatively small bird,
03:22and the system relies on human beings who do make mistakes and do overlook things sometimes,
03:29birds, harriers are still getting killed.
03:33Her NGO has equipped approximately 20 birds with GPS trackers,
03:38allowing them to follow the birds' routes and locate nesting sites.
03:43The NGO hopes its findings and recommendations can play a role in decisions about where new wind farms are built.
03:52At the moment, where we have tracked birds, it's been incredibly useful already,
03:59where there's a wind farm application or an approval for a wind farm,
04:04for us to show where there may be high risk,
04:08because of just a foraging pattern of the birds that are coming out of this particular colony.
04:15The Umoya Energy Wind Farm, 120 kilometres north of Cape Town, is trialling a different approach to bird protection.
04:24On each of the four wind turbines, where the most bird collisions occur, red stripes have been added to one rotor blade.
04:32This was done at a cost of $120,000.
04:36Bird expert Rob Simmons set up the pilot project.
04:40It takes into account the unusual vision of birds of prey.
04:45They've got very low contrast abilities, ten times poorer than you and I,
04:50so if you make it colour, the raptors are going to see it from a long way off,
04:54and if you make it high contrast, also they're going to see it, and it does seem to be working here.
05:00Five days a week, teams visit the turbines to look for carcasses.
05:05At those with red blades, they don't find any casualties.
05:12The really good news is from this Hopefield Wind Farm,
05:17that in 19 months post-treatment, we have managed to reduce the fatality rate to zero.
05:24So there are no more raptors, and there were seven before we started in two years, and zero since,
05:30despite the fact there are still raptors around.
05:32Back at the Excelsior Wind Farm, one bird species is benefiting especially from the monitoring.
05:38So we see it as highly effective.
05:40So the program essentially initially was designed primarily for Cape Vulture,
05:45and we've been 100% effective.
05:47In other words, we have had no Cape Vulture fatalities here at Excelsior
05:51as a result of implementing the program.
05:54You may start up and stay. It's a safe zone, thank you.
05:57As for Mauritia Martin, she says that nature didn't used to mean so much to her,
06:02but watching the birds has taught her to appreciate their beauty.