Wind turbines blamed for deaths of three sea eagles

Wind turbine blades have been responsible for the deaths of at least three white-tailed sea eagles in the Cork-Kerry area, the National Parks and Wildlife Service has revealed in a report to Bord Pleanála.

More than €1.5m has been invested in the white-tailed sea eagle programme based in the Killarney National Park, and it was now “at a very critical stage”, the wildlife service also said.

It urged that planning permission for a major upland windfarm by ESB Wind Development Ltd, along the Kerry-Cork border within range of the eagles be turned down. Eagles fly from their valley roosts “upslope to upland windfarms” and are at risk of collision as they soar, the NPWS said.

However, the bord last week gave the go-ahead for the Grousemount windfarm which spans 32 townlands across Kerry and Cork.

The ESB accepted that eagles are sensitive to wind farms but rejected the objections of the wildlife service, saying it found eagles rarely frequented the area. There have been 30 eagle deaths since the reintroduction and the majority of these were due to poisoning, it also said.

A project ecologist will be employed to report annually and ensure there is no carrion, which is what eagles live on, it said. Some 100 sea eagle chicks were brought from Norway between 2007 and 2011 to the Killarney National Park; no more releases are planned, and breeding territories have been established from Kerry to Fermanagh and one male has set up home in Scotland.

The NPWS said the sea eagle is “particularly susceptible to collision with turbine blades”, noting that 39 eagles died in Norway at one large wind farm between 2005 and 2010: “Three deaths due to turbine collision were recorded in Ireland and all of these deaths occurred at adjacent windfarms in 2011 and 2012.”

Further deaths may have occurred as a result of collisions after 2012, the NPWS also said. It strongly recommended refusal “given the risk of collision. The application, by ESB Wind Development Ltd, for the 38 turbine farm 17 km NE of Kenmare to 14km along the Cork border to the SW of Ballyvourney had been lodged directly with the bord last September as a strategic infrastructure development.

It has granted permission for 25 years. The development is to start within 10 years.