Yes, this is true, bird strikes are a real problem with wind turbines, killing hundreds of thousands of birds per annum in the US and Canada alone, as the graphic above indicates.
However, in all fairness, it should be pointed out that cats, windows & automobiles kill 10,000 times as many birds every year, and I’m not sure the fossil fuel industry is calling for people to give up their pet kitties, or apply a one-way coating to all their windows, now are they ?
Nonetheless, this statistic is not ideal, and better technologies should be developed to keep birds away.
Of course, when it comes to protecting our precious wildlife, one could argue quite reasonably, that the drilling, shipping, production and burning of fossil fuels kill a great deal more animals and humans around the world.
For instance, while the article shown below indicates 14 humans were killed by wind turbines in the UK in 2011, it is important to note that 3,000 people died in the coal industry in the same period, and zero in the nuclear industry (although the Fukushima accident data is rather sketchy in this regard).
In the end, if we’re not much more aggressive in our carbon pollution mitigation, the final killer of birds (and other wildlife) may turn out to be the Fossil Fuel Induced Methane Tipping Point, a feedback loop process that could render our planet uninhabitable by all but the most hardy of creatures such as insects, deep ocean sea life, viruses and bacteria.
