The Nationwide Audubon Society has launched a report that addresses the significance of quickly increasing electrical transmission to fulfill local weather targets whereas additionally defending wildlife habitat. The report, Birds and Transmission: Constructing the Grid Birds Want, outlines the pressing want for extra transmission capability, in addition to the present scientific understanding of options to attenuate dangers to birds.
By broadly figuring out excessive precedence areas the place transmission improvement and fowl impacts overlap, the report suggests how collaborative planning efforts can responsibly improve the clear vitality transmission grid to assist defend birds and folks from local weather threats.
“We threat shedding billions of birds if we don’t decrease emissions, and a responsibly expanded transmission grid that may ship clear vitality is vital to slowing the speed of world temperature rise,” mentioned Marshall Johnson, Chief Conservation Officer for the Nationwide Audubon Society. “Clear vitality ought to profit local weather, communities, and conservation. This report will assist establish how clear vitality builders, conservation organizations, and different stakeholders can work collectively to construct the form of grid that each birds and folks want for a cleaner future.”
Whooping Cranes, copyright Carolyn Fields, from the surfbirds galleries
Birds and Transmission: Constructing the Grid Birds Want builds on Audubon’s 2019 Survival by Levels report, which discovered that two-thirds of North American fowl species can be weak to extinction if world temperatures proceed to rise on the present fee. To realize a clear vitality future the place birds and folks can thrive, the U.S. might want to successfully double and even triple transmission capability to attach the amount of renewable vitality services wanted to succeed in emission targets. As a result of present processes for growing transmission traces take too lengthy and don’t all the time present enough environmental and cultural protections, collaborative efforts are wanted to hurry up the build-out of transmission whereas additionally minimizing dangers to biodiversity.
“Audubon understands the urgency of constructing the vital investments that may put together the transmission grid to deal with a clear vitality future. We additionally perceive how necessary it’s to do it in the correct manner,” mentioned Johnson. “By proactively implementing bird-friendly options earlier than breaking floor and taking reactive measures as soon as transmission is established, we are able to meet our emission targets and defend wildlife on the identical time.”
Within the report, Audubon highlights a number of the methods to cut back transmission dangers to birds based mostly on a well-established and sturdy scientific data base. These embrace proactive options, which must be carried out through the planning course of, and reactive options, that are carried out after building is full. In a map that overlays necessary fowl areas with areas which are necessary for vitality transmission, Audubon discovered that 33% of current and deliberate transmission and 27% of deliberate and potential transmission coincide with precedence areas for birds. Most of those deliberate and potential precedence areas are prone to happen inside current rights of manner, which implies that many of those areas can help tasks that won’t result in new habitat degradation, though some disturbances should happen.
The Birds and Transmission report can be a useful resource for Audubon employees and chapter leaders to establish precedence areas the place they’ll work to affect clear vitality transmission sited with bird-friendly options. Workers work carefully with clear vitality builders, authorities companies, tribal nations, communities, associate organizations, and the Audubon Community to help, expedite, and develop the accountable improvement of fresh vitality tasks, planning, and insurance policies. Extra about Audubon’s place on transmission coverage will be discovered right here.
