ORIGINAL PAPER Wildl. Biol. Pract., 2011 December 7(2): 1-14 doi:10.2461/wbp.2011.7.11 Copyright © 2011 J. Bernardino, R. Bispo, P. Torres, R. Rebelo, M. Mascarenhas & H. Costa. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distri- bution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Published by: Portuguese Wildlife Society. ENhANcING cARcASS REmOvAL T RIALS AT ThREE WINd ENERGy FAcILITIES IN PORTuGAL J. Bernardino 1,* , R. Bispo 2 , P. Torres 1 , R. Rebelo 3 , M. Mascarenhas 1 & H. Costa 1 1 Bio3 Estudos e Projectos em Biologia e Valorização de Recursos Naturais, Lda., Rua D. Francisco Xavier de Noronha, 37B 2800-092 Almada, Portugal. 2 Grupo de Estatística e Matemática, Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, Rua Jardim do tabaco, 34, 1149-041 Lisboa, Portugal. 3 Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Avenida Nª Senhora do Cabo, Nº 939, 2750-374 Cascais, Portugal. * Corresponding author: e-mail: joana.bernardino@bio3.pt; Phone: +351 212-951-588 Keywords Bird Mortality; Carcass Removal Trials; Monitoring; Survey Effort; Survival Analysis; Wind Farm. Abstract During the last years there has been a signiicant worldwide increase in the number of wind farms. This kind of energy can have negative impacts, such as the direct mortality or lethal injury of birds and bats caused by collision with wind turbines. In order to evaluate bird (or bat) mortality regarding wind power generation facilities, strict monitoring protocols are required which must take into account the possibility of carcass removal by scavenging animals or decomposition before the monitoring session. For this purpose, carcass removal trials with 180 carcasses representing three size classes (small, medium and large) were conducted in two seasons (Spring and Autumn) at three wind farms located in the central region of Portugal. No signiicant differences were found between removal rates of different wind farms or size classes contrarily to seasons, which presented an average carcass removal time of 3.9 and 4.6 days, respectively for Spring and Autumn. The results of the present study showed the importance of trials to estimate the carcass removal rates, which inluences the survey effort management and consequently the monitoring protocols. The experimental design for future trials in the same region should account for season effect and be conducted using daily checks of the carcasses for, at least, 15 days. Introduction Nowadays, wind is considered worldwide as one of the most promising energy sources found in nature. Despite the obvious beneits of wind turbines as a clean energy source, the construction of wind farms can be responsible of impacts on lying vertebrates, such as fatality through collision with rotating turbine rotor blades, habitat modiication, barrier effect or disturbance in nesting areas [1-4]. These impacts, especially the birds and bats mortality, became a source of major concern among a number of stakeholder groups [5-10]. In fact, results obtained during several monitoring studies indicated that wind farms were responsible for the