Credit Todd Katzner/U.S. Geological Survey
Wind farms pose a threat to eagles. But a new system to identify the raptors and shut down the turbines may help.
Chris McClure is the Director of Global Conservation Science at the Peregrine Fund a non-profit conservation group. He and his team tested the effectiveness of Identi-Flight systems. That s the technology that takes images and identifies birds. If it sees one, it shuts down the wind turbine.
The Top of the World Wind Farm in Converse County is outfitted with the technology. McClure and his team compared the number of eagle fatalities there to a nearby wind farm without Identi-Flight. They found the deaths decreased by 82 percent where the technology was used.