“Every time we get an animal carcass, it has research value,” Katzner said. “If I think about it scientifically, if you leave that body in the wild, you’re wasting data.”
That data is important to people like Amanda Hale, a biologist at Texas Christian University who helped build the repository. She is now a senior research biologist at Western Ecosystems Technology, a consulting firm that, among other services, investigates wildlife mortality at renewable energy sites. Part of her new responsibilities involve liaising with clean energy companies and the government agencies that regulate them, ensuring policymakers have the latest scientific knowledge to inform projects. Better data can help clients create more accurate conservation plans and help agencies know what to look for, making regulation more straightforward, she said.
“Once we can understand mortality patterns, I think you can better design and implement mitigation strategies,” Hale said.
Still, the initiative is not without its doubters. John Anderson, executive director of clean energy membership group Action Alliance for Energy and Wildlife, sees merit in the effort, but worries that the plan could be “used to characterize the impacts of renewable energy in a very unfavorable way,” without awareness to its benefit. The wind energy industry has long been sensitive to claims it is killing birds.
Several renewable energy companies contacted by Undark for this story did not respond to inquiries about their on-site wildlife monitoring or stopped responding to interview requests. Other industry groups, including the Clean Energy Institute of America and the Wildlife Institute for Renewable Energy, declined interview requests. But many companies seem to be involved—in Idaho, Katzner has received birds from 42 states.
William Voelker, a member of the Comanche Nation who for decades has led a bird and feather repository called Sia, said he is frustrated by the lack of tribal consideration in such moves by the U.S. government. Indigenous peoples have priority over “species of indigenous concern”, he said. While his database catalogs bird carcasses and feathers and sends them to Aboriginal people for ritual and religious purposes, Voelker also cares about eagles.
“At this point, we just don’t have any sound in the ring, which is unfortunate,” Voelker said.
For his part, Khazner said he wanted the project to be collaborative. He said the Renewable Wildlife Solutions Initiative had sent some samples to an Arizona repository that provides feathers for religious and ritual purposes, and the RWSI Archives could ship other materials it doesn’t archive, but had not been contacted yet. Do this in other locations.
“It would be a shame if these parts of the bird weren’t used,” he said. “I would like to see them used for scientific or cultural purposes.”
beautiful wind The farm is already monitoring and collecting fallen wildlife. At the California wind farm an hour north of Altamonte, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District tries to clean out the freezers at least once a year — before the bodies start to smell, says Amon Lay, director of environmental services for the government-owned utility. Ammon Rice said. The samples collected by the company are usually stored until they are discarded. Until recently, government and academic researchers had access to samples only sporadically.
