Billions of birds may be killed each year in the United States, but contrary to popular belief, wind turbines are not the main culprit.
Former President Trump has repeatedly used his prominent position to argue that wind turbines, an economically rational component of U.S. energy production, are “killing our birds.”
“Wind kills birds. If you want to see a bird graveyard, go under a windmill,” Mr. Trump said recently on national television in a video that went viral, with his running mate, J.D. Vance, chuckling as the allegation was repeated.
But with the distorted facts, unverified claims, viral misinformation, and fake videos swirling around the internet, spreading misinformation isn’t much fun. Indeed, as detailed below, wind farms inevitably kill birds. All energy production has a costBut wind turbines, cleverly engineered from airplane wings, aren’t decimating America’s bird populations.
These animals became extinct in 2023
“Compared to wind farms, other aspects of human life are much more deadly, kill far more species, and are much more difficult to solve,” Anne B. Clark, a biologist and bird expert at Binghamton University, told Mashable.
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What’s Killing America’s Birds?
There are many human-caused causes of bird deaths, but the birds that live in our immediate surroundings are the ones that suffer the most.
“The worst offenders are feral and outdoor pet cats, estimated to kill as many as 4 billion birds a year, including the backyard songbirds that people treasure and control as pests,” Clark explained. (In the United States, at least, cats likely kill more than 1 billion birds a year.)
That’s why biologists are urging people to keep cats indoors: “Just one person keeping a cat indoors can save hundreds, maybe thousands, of birds. It’s a no-brainer,” avian biologist Nico Arcilla previously told Mashable.
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The next leading cause of bird deaths in the U.S. are buildings (and their windows), estimated to kill around 365 million to 988 million birds each year. “The birds range from tiny hummingbirds to large owls,” Clark said. (Here’s how to limit the number of birds colliding with your windows.) And it’s not just tall buildings that are killing birds: Any structure or object in a bird’s flight path – power lines, communication towers, cars – is responsible for the deaths of millions of birds every year, Clark added. Cars kill an estimated 214 million birds each year.
In the United States, electricity production from wind energy has been increasing for decades.
Credit: EIA
Additionally, bird carcasses need to be collected and tested for toxins, so there are too many culprits to count, including rodenticides, pesticides, water pollution, and more.
But wind turbines have had a relatively low impact on bird mortality: “Studies show that wind energy projects rank low on the list of human-caused bird mortality, causing far fewer deaths per year than those caused by pets, collisions with buildings, or collisions with vehicles,” the Department of Energy explains. Land-based turbines with their giant rotating blades kill an estimated 234,012 birds per year, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Wind farms reduce bird deaths
Abundant wind energy, which provides 125,000 jobs and cheap energy in the United States, continues to grow.
The good news is that building and operating wind farms can help reduce bird deaths. “There are a number of ways to reduce the risk to birds,” Jeff Buehler, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Delaware, told Mashable.
These include locating wind farms away from bird migration paths, painting blades black (a Norwegian wind farm has reduced bird deaths by 70 percent as a visual aid), adding sound, and using fewer, larger turbines. They can also shut down turbines for a few days when many birds pass through a particular area. Buehler and other researchers have found that by looking at radar data, they can better predict migrations in bird migration paths like the Great Lakes region, allowing turbine operators to temporarily shut down operations. “We can reduce collisions,” Buehler said.
“It’s much easier to make a false claim than to back it up with evidence.”
Wind farms are not without environmental costs, but they almost certainly result in far fewer bird deaths than the fossil fuel sector, which requires intensive extraction and burning of fuel.
“Coal-, oil- and natural gas-fired power plants cause bird deaths at various stages of the fuel cycle: upstream from coal mining, on-site from collisions and electrocution with operating plant equipment, and downstream from poisoning and death due to acid rain, mercury contamination and climate change,” one study said. Journal of Integrated Environmental ScienceThe study concluded that “fossil fuel facilities are about 35 times more hazardous to birds per GWh than wind energy.” (A GWh, or gigawatt hour, is a unit of measurement for energy production or consumption.)
We are likely to see more misleading claims about renewable energy and a variety of other topics in the coming months. Be wary of sound bites and false talking points.
“It’s much easier to make a false claim than to back it up with evidence,” Buehler said.
This article has been updated with more data on bird deaths in the United States.
