Wildlife Monitoring and Reporting System using Operations Personnel: 5-year Assessment

As part of Avangrid Renewables, LLC (AR) Wildlife Protection Program, a Wildlife Monitoring and Reporting System (WMRS) is utilized to monitor and internally report wildlife injury and fatalities discovered during operations... [ view full abstract ]

As part of Avangrid Renewables, LLC (AR) Wildlife Protection Program, a Wildlife Monitoring and Reporting System (WMRS) is utilized to monitor and internally report wildlife injury and fatalities discovered during operations at its North American wind energy facilities. This is completed through voluntary, long-term operational monitoring conducted by operations and maintenance (O&M) personnel. These O&M personnel monitor and record wildlife injuries and fatalities to assess potential long-term operational impacts (trends) of a Project, or collectively, fleet-wide. There are three components to operational monitoring: 1) Environmental Coordinator (EC) inspections (standardized searches in the fall and spring) along access roads and pads, 2) monthly turbine checks (conducted with Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) inspections at turbine pads), and 3) incidental observations for the entire plant. A key factor on validity of the methods is testing the ability of O&M personnel to detect bird or bat carcasses and subsequently assess the application to long-term monitoring. To address this factor, detection testing (searcher efficiency trials) was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of O&M personnel to detect fatalities during EC inspections at 4 study sites located across the U.S. The ECs found 105 of 139 carcasses resulting in detection level of 76% for all carcasses. This reinforced the use of operations personnel for long-term monitoring of bird and bat fatalities to provide a potential cost-effective approach to monitoring project impacts. Operational monitoring conducted since 2011 at up to 48 operating projects have been a part of WMRS and approximately 15,000 data points (inspections, checks, and observations) for wildlife monitoring have occurred. This data was evaluated for 3 areas or parameters (species composition, carcass index/detection rates, and detection rates vs estimated fatality rates) of operational monitoring that may provide valid measure or indexes of impact. Species composition data were compared to species composition from over 200 post-construction fatality studies at 139 North American wind farms. Species composition in the monitoring data was broadly similar to species composition from these wind plants. Detection rates from operations monitoring were weakly correlated with published fatality rates for bats and large birds suggesting that detection rates for operations monitoring may be useful as a broad index to overall fatality rates for those groups of taxa or as detecting large anomalous fatality events. There was little evidence for trends in detection rates through time, and no evidence for increasing trends in detection rates (impacts). Taken together, the current assessment demonstrates that operations monitoring using trained on-site O&M personnel provides a general indicator of the level of wildlife impacts, presents a level of sensitivity necessary to trigger responses, and acts as valid approach for understanding impacts levels at operating assets.