Wind turbines blamed in death of estimated 600,000 bats in 2012

BOULDER, Colo., (UPI) -- Wind turbines killed at least 600,000 -- and possibly as many as 900,000 -- bats in the United States in 2012, researchers say.

Writing in the journal BioScience, the researchers said they used sophisticated statistical techniques to infer the probable number of bat deaths at wind energy facilities from the number of dead bats found at 21 locations.

Bats, which play an important role in the ecosystem as insect-eaters, are killed at wind turbines not only by collisions with moving turbine blades but also by the trauma resulting from sudden changes in air pressure that occur near a fast-moving blade, the study said.

Study author Mark Hayes of the University of Colorado notes that 600,000 is a conservative estimate -- the true number could be 50 percent higher than that -- and some areas of the country might experience much higher bat fatality rates at wind energy facilities than others.

Hayes said the Appalachian Mountains have the highest estimated fatality rates in his analysis.

With bats already under stress because of climate change and disease, in particular white-nose syndrome, the estimate of wind turbine deaths is worrisome, he said -- especially as bat populations grow only very slowly, with most species producing only one young per year.

Summer Evenings In the Desert

Commentary | The Hidden Desert

The hour of sunset in the Mojave Desert | Chris Clarke photo

by Chris Clarke
KCET.com

It's hot in the desert right now. Triple digits last week in the Mojave a little earlier than usual, August weather arriving in June, and I spend most of my days indoors at the writing desk. That writing desk has a built-in alarm, though: it's next to a west-facing window with an overhang. When the sun shines in my eyes, sunset's an hour off, and it's time to walk out into the desert.

Even when the day is hot, at 3,500 feet sundown brings pretty rapid cooling. The day's stored heat radiates up into the sky. The breeze raises the hairs on my neck. 95° seems sweet after a triple-digit day, and the mid-80s sweeter still, and the slanting, coloring light draws me deeper into the desert.

Outside my house is a mature palo verde. It's flowering this month, sweet-scented yellow bean flowers that tempt passersby to lean in, breathe deeply, and come away with a face full of scratches from palo verde thorns. That's the voice of experience speaking.

In that long hour before the sun drops down behind San Gorgonio Mountain a million little flies and wasps come out to drink palo verde blossom nectar, all but invisible against the darkening sky. Invisible but not unseen: not long after the bugs come out, so do the bats. In my yard, three or four pallid bats tend to come out each night to keep the pollinators' population down a bit. They get bolder as the sky grows darker, and those in my yard have grown accustomed enough to me that they inspect me at remarkably close range, hovering three feet from my face for fifteen or twenty seconds.

When I lived in Nipton five years ago, my back yard faced out onto almost 200,000 acres of open Mojave, and I would go there in the evenings and watch the shadow of Clark Mountain sweep across twenty miles of desert. From a distance it looked as sharp as a knife's edge. As it drew closer, as the sun's disk began to hide in increments behind the mountain's summit ridge, that edge dulled. It became a long, shallow gradient from light to dark. The bats came out at the edge's mid-point, when the sky had turned from blue-white to salmon. The lesser nighthawks came out then as well, swooping more aggressively than the bats at their insect prey.

Nighthawks haven't discovered my yard in Joshua Tree, at least not that I know of. The bats don't have that company in the airspace around the palo verde.

In the square mile of desert behind my house, the cactus wrens start slowing their pace. They're one of the few birds here that's most active in mid-day, even in the hottest afternoons. They flit between the Joshua trees' limbs, their breasts' whitish speckles glowing pinker as they reflect the lowering sun's light. Crissal thrashers and Gambel's quail try to catch a few last beaksful of food, running around in the desert underbrush.

With the sun low in the sky, a remarkable thing happens for those animals that live close to the ground: the desert is suddenly both well-lit and full of shade. The shadows of the low shrubs start to fill all the open ground between them, offering a chance for animals to forage without getting broiled.

Lizards have a complicated relationship with shade in summer. In the mornings the larger lizards seek direct sun to boost their body temperature. In mid-day they've had enough and stay beneath the shrubs. Side-blotched lizards and Great Basin whiptails, common around here, take advantage of late afternoon's spreading shade to forage for ambling insects. On my last walk I watched as a whiptail launched itself at an Eleodes beetle. The beetle stood on its head at the lizard, which reconsidered its decision. Eleodes squirts a noxious chemical weapon out of its hind end at potential predators. The headstand is a warning. Most animals that have eaten a previous Eleodes don't have to think twice about backing off.

One can walk off into the sunset only so far. Eventually the sun sets all the way and you have to turn around and walk back. The shadow of San Gorgonio fills the Morongo Basin the way Clark Mountain's filled the Ivanpah Valley, and the far slopes of the Sheepholes stay brightly lit enough to silhouette the Joshua trees for the next half hour.

Of course, the whole notion of the "end of the day" is a subjective one. One person's dusk is another person's alarm clock. Across the desert, as the bands of red fade along the western horizon, a family business opens its doors for the new workday. Their yipping song carries on the wind, announcing the beginning of the evening's hunt. I'll hear them again at 4:00 am, if I'm lucky enough to be awake.

Safety measures OK'd for abandoned mines at Mojave preserve

By JESSICA CEJNAR
Desert Dispatch

BARSTOW • Officials at the Mojave National Preserve expect to award contracts for companies to install safety measures at the preserve’s most visited abandoned mines.

Potential safety measures for abandoned mines at the preserve include grates, fencing, culvert gates and foam closures.

This project and other abandoned mine safety projects at National Parks across the west will be paid for by $13 million in federal stimulus dollars. But more than 50 percent of the work will be done at Death Valley National Park and the Mojave National Preserve, said Robert Bryson, Abandoned Mine Lands program manager for the Pacific West Region.

As soon as the contracts are awarded, work at the preserve can begin. Bryson said it will take about four or five months to finish. About 1,800 abandoned mine shafts and other features exist at the preserve.

The National Park Service decided to move forward with the safety measures at the abandoned mines after a three-week public comment period on an environmental assessment report ended in February. There were only two comments addressing impacts the project will have on wildlife particularly bats, said Dannette Woo, the preserve’s environmental compliance specialist. Bryson said officials have already conducted bat surveys at the mine sites to determine what kind of closure to install.

In addition to the Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley National Park, safety measures will be installed at abandoned mines at Joshua Tree National Park and Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

BLM seals abandoned mines in the desert

From Staff Reports
Barstow Desert Dispatch

The Bureau of Land Management is moving to seal abandoned mines in the Mojave desert.

Working with a new public/private partnership called Fix a Shaft Today!, the BLM recently sealed a mine shaft in the Mojave National Preserve near the Nevada border and one on BLM land near Ludlow, according to a release from the bureau. The Mojave National Preserve, California Department of Conservation Mine Reclamation, 4Granite Inc., and PUF-SEAL partnered with the BLM on the projects.

Before closing the mines, the BLM surveyed them to make sure they were not being used as habitat by bats or other wildlife, according to the release. The California Department of Conservation Abandoned Mine Lands Unit has identified about 165,000 mine features on 47,000 abandoned mine sites in the state.

BLM spokesman David Briery said that the bureau expects to get funding for abandoned mine closures from the stimulus package, but have gotten no official word.

The BLM California Desert District is kicking off a public scoping period for an assessment that will address safety hazards associated with abandoned mines. For more information, contact Sterling White at 951-697-5239.

Bat man comes to the rescue of, well, bats

By TERRY TANG
Associated Press





Jason Corbett descends into a mine in the Tonto National Forest in Arizona in August. Since January, Corbett, an Arizona conservation biologist, has taken on a specialized role that has him going into mine shafts to ensure that bats living underground don't become casualties in efforts to close abandoned mines across the Southwest.

PHOENIX (AP) — He may not be caped, but in the bat world, Jason Corbett is definitely a crusader.

Since January, the Arizona conservation biologist has taken on a specialized role that has him descending into mine shafts to ensure bats living underground don't become casualties of efforts to close abandoned mines across the Southwest.

"It's easy enough to exclude bats from mines. There's no reason for them to be entombed," said Corbett, who works out of Tucson as a coordinator for the nonprofit group Bat Conservation International.

As someone designated to stick up for the little — albeit furry — guy, the bat buff travels around Arizona and other states offering inspections and recommendations. He is getting more companies and agencies to agree that doing nothing would be senseless.

Bats occupy a very important niche as nocturnal predators. They help the ecosystem by eating insects, including pests that eat crops like cotton and corn.

Angie McIntire, bat management coordinator for the Arizona Game & Fish Department, said mines can house thousands of bats. They may only use a mine for a couple months but it could be during a critical time such as giving birth or feeding young.

Both McIntire and Corbett said there is no way to gauge how many bats have been lost in mines. There is no official survey.

"I'm sure sites have been closed without any thoughts to bats or even knowledge they're in there," McIntire said.

Bat Conservation International started a national bats and mines program about 12 years ago. It was only a couple years ago that officials decided it would be better to have a coordinator devoted specifically to the Southwest.

Corbett's mine visits generally occur when government agencies and groups approach him with a mine location. But sometimes he will learn about a site and initiate contact. The real work begins once he and a support team, usually a trio of land officials and wildlife biologists, decide to go in.

While Corbett often inspects caves and horizontal shafts, it's vertical shafts that involve more work. Corbett uses a variety of ropes and a harness to lower himself into the shafts — some have been more than 500 feet deep. Corbett will hang a few feet before touching down in a shaft, using a pole or tracking stick to probe for other critters. He once came down near a rattlesnake and was able to gently move it away.

Once he's landed, Corbett looks for signs of bat life, such as bat droppings, also known as guano, or meal leftovers in the form of insect parts. But the research doesn't stop there.

"I'm looking at the bigger picture — how does that one mine fit into the larger landscape in terms of providing quality of habitat," Corbett said.

If other factors like temperature and exposure to predators show the mine to be habitable bat space, Corbett will recommend constructing a steel gate that would be narrow enough to keep humans out but let bats flit freely.

"If a mine is unsafe, putting a bat gate on is twofold; it keeps people out and also protects bats," Corbett said. "The two goals are not mutually exclusive."

If the danger to people is too great, they can drive bats out before filling up a mine. The process, called exclusion, involves putting a chicken wire netting over an entry point for several days. Bats can fly out through the netting but can't squeeze back in.

If no bats are found, then mine owners will likely be free to seal up a mine however they see fit.

Closing deserted mines has long been a public concern.

The issue took on more urgency in Arizona last year when a girl fell to her death in a mine shaft in the northwestern part of the state. The Arizona State Mine Inspector's Office estimates there are more than 9,500 abandoned mines statewide. There are hundreds of thousands more in neighboring states.

Chris Ross, leader of an abandoned mines program for the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada, praised Corbett for his understanding of not just the science, but the social and demographic issues. He said Corbett makes assessments that are economical but don't compromise public safety.

"He'll prioritize and spend big bucks on expensive bat gates on the ones that are important," Ross said. "The rest of them, we can chase the little dears out and fill them (the mines) up cheaply."

Corbett hopes to continue building relationships in more states such as Colorado and Utah. Most mining companies have been cooperative when it comes to finding a way to let bats roost in peace.

"They're happy to have some help on these issues," he said. "They want to do the right thing but like everyone else, they are strapped on resources."

On the Net:
Bat Conservation International: http://www.batcon.org