High-mounted wind turbine rotors less harmful for red kites

Wind turbines with high-mounted rotors are safer for red kites. This is shown by a study for which around 3,000 birds from Switzerland, Austria, Germany and other countries were fitted with GPS trackers and observed for 11 years. + Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox The findings could be used in the planning of new wind turbines, according to a statement from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), which co-financed the study. Of the 3,000 red kites tracked over the eleven years, 41 birds died in collisions with wind turbines. These included four of the 500 or so birds tracked by the Swiss Ornithological Institute. These were killed by wind turbines in France, Spain and Germany. No such deaths were recorded in Switzerland itself. According to the SNSF, this is probably due to the comparatively low number of wind turbines in Switzerland. Almost half of the collisions occurred in the north of Germany, where the number of wind turbines is particularly high.