'Mutilated' rare vulture near wind turbine sparks legal threat from campaigners
Death of bird near Acciona turbine latest flash point in ongoing tensions between wind farm operators and conservationists
Spanish developer Acciona Energia is facing a legal complaint after one of its wind turbines was blamed for the death of a rare bearded vulture that was found “mutilated” nearby.
Foundation for the Conservation of the Bearded Vulture (FCQ) claimed this week that the vulture died after being hit by a turbine blade.
FCQ said that data from the tracker being carried by the vulture, known as Masía, alerted its team to an “activity anomaly” that indicated she might have suffered an accident.
The FCQ team and agents from the Government of Aragon later found Masía’s corpse at the 50MW Refoyas wind farm, 40 metres from a turbine.
FCQ claimed the death showed the impact that that “poorly designed” wind farms have on biodiversity in Spain and said it is preparing a complaint to the local environmental prosecutor’s office.
While companies invest huge amounts of money in “large self-promotion campaigns to convince society of the sustainability of the wind energy production process, the facts show that the reality is different,” said FCQ vice president Gerardo Báguena.
He cited the “daily death of hundreds of animals in Spain” that are only evident when beacons with satellite technology are available, such as those used in monitoring threatened species.
Once common, they were hunted to the brink of extinction, and have more recently been the subject of a decades long reintroduction programme.
FCQ last year paused part of that programme over concerns over the proposed construction of another wind farm, that would have more than 100 turbines with tips over 150 metres tall.
Báguena said that building wind farms in areas of great ecological value without taking sufficient technical measures to reduce bird mortality risks efforts put in by institutions, research centres and NGOs to protect threatened species.
“Acciona Energia fully committed to the protection of wildlife and we rigorously comply with environmental monitoring protocols at all our facilities.”
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