Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Since 2007, we have been monitoring the migration patterns of birds (nocturnal migrants, such as songbirds and waterfowl, and day-migrating raptors) at proposed wind developments in British Columbia's south Peace region. This area of northeastern BC is heavily prospected for wind development, and is currently the only region of the province with operating wind farms. One of these farms, for which construction was completed in November 2010 and commercial production began in February 2011, is the Dokie Wind Energy Project located approximate 40 km NW of the community of Chetwynd, BC. As part of an NSERC Strategic Project Grant (2007-2010), we conducted extensive tracking of the migratory pathways of night flying birds (using radars) and day-flying golden eagles through this installation during the pre-construction and construction phase of the development. We developed novel techniques of exporting radar and visually-detected tracks into GIS for three dimensional tracking of birds in relation to the wind farm. Our data show that migrants follow both predictable routes through the region and predictable seasonal patterns of movement during migration, which together may allow for high levels of targeted mitigation during the operational phase of the farm. However, the economic downturn of 2009 slowed development of this installation. Hence, post-construction research to test predictions about avoidance behaviour and collision risk of the operational installation have yet to be conducted. The application at hand is to conduct one additional year of post construction research on golden eagle migration and two additional years on nocturnal migrants to complete the analysis that we commenced in 2007. This is critical to gain the maximum benefit from the pre-construction data already obtained during the construction phases of the project.