Perspective for Prager

The esteemed purveyors of disinformation at Prager “U” have latched onto the idea that ‘wind power is killing all of the birds.’

While many birds die from collisions with turbines and six hundred thousand of them is nothing to sneeze at, that number could benefit from a bit of context. Let’s check a few studies for that.

One study found somewhere between 500 million and over 1 billion birds die each year in the US thanks to “collisions with human-made structures such as vehicles, buildings and windows, power lines, communication towers, and wind turbines; electrocutions; oil spills and other contaminants; pesticides; cat predation; and commercial fishing by-catch.” Another study found building collisions alone kill somewhere between 100 million and a billion birds a year.

And then there are the cats. Here’s the key finding from a 2013 study in Nature.

If we take the low end of that estimate and only account for un-owned cats, we’re looking at around 900 million birds. It’s not 600,000, but I assure you the cats are doing their best.