County News
Little Brown Bat
The little brown bat is in trouble. Once one of the most common bats in North America, its numbers have been decimated by disease. White nose syndrome is a fungal disease that is killing the little brown bat by the millions. According to uncontested evidence presented at the Tribunal, as much as 95 per cent of the little brown bat population has been wiped out since 2010. It was listed as an endangered species in Ontario in 2013.
The evidence also shows that wind turbines kill bats. Lots of them. According to data collected on Wolfe Island in 2010 by Stantec, an engineering consultancy, industrial wind turbines kill as many as 1,270 bats per year—92 per cent of these are Little Brown bats.
The Tribunal noted the feebleness of the Renewable Energy Approval (REA) permitting process—in that it prescribes mitigation measures only after 10 or more bats have been killed per turbine.
“The only requirement in the Renewable Energy Approval (REA) applicable to all Species At Risk, including little brown bat, is the condition that if even one is found dead, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) must be notified within 24 hours,” wrote the Tribunal in its ruling. “There is no requirement in the REA that mitigation be undertaken immediately when a single dead little brown bat is found or that these measures are to be used routinely as a preventative measure to protect this endangered species.”
The developer argued that there was insufficient evidence that there were any little brown bats on the project site. Further, it presented expert opinion that bat deaths were mostly migrating animals. The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MOECC’s) lawyer said mitigation measures would reduce bat fatalities.
The Tribunal disagreed.
“The Approval Holder’s OMP (operational mitigation plan), while a significant improvement over the provisions in the REA, will not minimize little brown bat mortality,” wrote the Tribunal.
While it accepted that fatalities may be small in number, the Tribunal, found that given the severely stressed state of the little brown bat population, the project, as approved, would cause serious and irreversible harm
Yes there are some problems with windmill, as there will be problems with any type of energy. But on the whole windmills are a cleaner solution for energy than natural gas, oil or nuclear power. We have to learn to work with the new forms of energy and try to fix the problems that come with them as they arise. I have done some reading up on little brown bats and other forms of bats. Each type of Bat sends out different sounds for different situations. I wonder if we could not create a box that recognizes different bats sound(and perhaps birds) and when it picks them up sends back a sound to the bats their signal for danger that will make them fly away from the area instead of flying into windmills.