Wind energy is essential for climate goals, but turbine collisions with birds and bats cause significant mortality that requires careful siting, monitoring, and mitigation to minimise.
Wind turbine collision mortality causes acute suffering from impact trauma, with injured birds and bats dying from broken bones, haemorrhage, and predation before they can be recovered. The welfare significance extends beyond individual animals to population-level impacts on vulnerable species with low reproductive rates. The challenge is that wind energy is itself a crucial tool for avoiding the far larger wildlife welfare harms of unchecked climate change. Mitigation technologies that reduce mortality during high-risk periods while maintaining energy output offer a genuine resolution to this tension. Their widespread adoption would substantially reduce the welfare cost of necessary renewable energy expansion.