Wind farms are a crucial component of the UK’s transition towards renewable energy and achieving net-zero emissions, and the UK government has said that it is committed to double onshore wind and quadruple offshore wind by 2030. While a necessary part of the renewable energy transition, wind farms can have negative impacts on seabird populations as individuals can collide with turbine blades and could get displaced from their foraging areas and travel routes by the expanding farms.

To combat this issue and help seabird populations flourish in a time of transition, scientists from the University of Glasgow have now developed a new modelling tool. Published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, it is the first of its kind to accurately predict space use of seabird colonies without requiring extensive satellite tracking data, which is often not available.

Researchers believe their new tool could be transformative for offshore wind farm planning, allowing us to protect wildlife while also safely building sources of renewable energy. Additionally, they say it could also be used to accurately predict the space use of other colonial wildlife, including seals, bats and bees.

Lead author of the study, PhD student Holly Niven from the School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary Medicine, said: “Accurate estimation of the impacts of offshore wind farms and other stressors on seabirds can help us make more informed decisions about offshore wind farm plans and protect the species living around our coasts.”

While seabird environmental assessment tools are already used to inform planning decisions for offshore wind farms and are often useful, current assessment methods can vary in accuracy and may lead to offshore wind farms being built in areas with high bird density. Conversely, offshore wind farm developments may be inadvertently rejected based on overestimates of seabirds at sea.

Jason Matthiopoulos, Professor of Spatial and Population Ecology who supervised the study, said: “Ironically, different environmentally positive activities such as wildlife conservation and our progress towards green energy can come into conflict with each other. Resolving these conflicts relies on good data, but equally, on state-of-the-art computer modelling techniques.”

Many seabird species nest in colonies on small pieces of land, including clusters of rocks off the coast. From there, birds fly and forage around a local area at sea – their home range – which varies in size depending on colony size and location. Because of these behaviours, central-place foragers such as seabirds, are particularly sensitive to environmental stressors in their local surroundings, including the development of wind farms, which may have severe impacts on colony numbers and wellbeing.

Using GPS tracking data from eight Northern gannet colonies to verify their predictions, the researchers now show that their new tool approximately doubles on the predictive power of other industry standard methods. The new tool was 73% accurate on  average, in comparison to 41% and 31% accuracy of current seabird assessment tools. Current methods also over- and underestimated colony exposure to offshore wind farms in different scenarios.

Jana Jeglinski, Research Fellow and co-supervisor of the study, said: “Many seabird colonies are located at remote islands or cliffs that make GPS tracking studies extremely challenging or even impossible. Our method can predict biologically realistic home ranges and exposure for such inaccessible colonies and it can also forecast future home ranges given the size of a colony – this is important since offshore wind farm construction will drastically increase in the near future.”

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