Why wind farms are often bad for our bats

A wind turbine in Europe or North America kills, on average, 2.3 birds and 2.9 bats each year, according to a 2012 report by the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, writes Richard Collins.

Migrants are particularly vulnerable. Scientists at the University of Exeter, using sniffer dogs to locate carcasses at UK wind-farms, found that bat “casualty rates varied from 1 to 64 per month across 29 sites”. The overall toll was 194. Common and soprano pipistrelles were the main victims.