© by PSP Volume 26 – No. 11/2017 pages 6543-6550 Fresenius Environmental Bulletin 6543 ESTIMATION OF BIRD FATALITIES CAUSED BY WIND TURBINES IN TURKEY Kalender Arikan 1,* , Salih Levent Turan 2 1 Hacettepe University, Faculty of Education, Department of Biology Education, 06800 Beytepe Campus, Çankaya – Ankara/Turkey 2 Hacettepe University, Center for Environmental Education, Birdringing and Avian Research 06800 Beytepe Campus, Çankaya – Ankara/Turkey ABSTRACT The present study aims to examine several as- pects of the interaction between wind farms and birds in Turkey. Between 2010 and 2014, we con- ducted surveys at three wind farms in three Turkish provinces with the highest wind speed capacity. The total installed power capacity at the farms was 78 MW on 30 turbines. We assessed carcass persistence rates, bird fatality rates (FA), and bird fatalities around turbines. The carcass detection surveys yielded 27 bird fatalities, comprising 12 non-passer- ines and 15 passerines. There were 20,154 flights recorded within 0–500 m of all turbines. We used fa- tality estimation methods to derive an FA of 1.32 birds/turbine/year for all study areas. Moreover, the FA for small, medium, and large birds was 0.62, 0.52, and 0.16 birds/turbine/year, respectively. The results revealed that there was a negative relationship (rs = - 0.444, p = 0.034) between the flight frequency of birds within 0–500 m of the wind turbines and bird mortality. The number of individuals, flight fre- quency, and abundance of species were not among the direct causes of bird fatalities within the study areas. KEYWORDS: bird carcasses, wind power plants, Hatay, İstanbul, Çanak- kale, collision risk. INTRODUCTION Owing to the diminishing supplies of fossil re- sources, evidence of their negative effects on the en- vironment, and increasing power costs, governments have been led to wind energy, which has been re- garded as an environmentally friendly and renewable energy resource [1]. The 2013 data of the Ministry of Energy indicates that Turkey’s total energy de- mand is increasing by 6% per year [2]. The total wind energy capacity of Turkey (83,000 MW) [3] is highly significant. The first modern wind power plant in Turkey was constructed in İzmir in 1984 with a power supply of 55 kW [4]. The total installed power of wind power plants in Turkey is 4192.8 MW and the capacity used during their construction was 1936.75 MW up to June 2015 [5]. According to 2013 data from the Ministry of Energy and Natural Re- sources, Turkey supplied 4% of its energy demand from wind power plants in 2012. According to the mid-year report of the World Wind Energy Associa- tion [6], wind power plants supply 4% of the world’s power demand with 336,237 MW installed power. In this respect, Turkey’s wind energy market is similar to that of the global wind energy market. Besides the economic and political issues surrounding wind en- ergy, the interactions between wind power plants and nature has also been an academic debate. In addition to the positive aspects of wind en- ergy, a number of studies have been conducted on the effects of wind power plants (during both con- struction and operation) on birds and bats [7, 8, 9, 10]. In fact, wind turbines can cause bird and bat fa- talities. There are four adverse effects of turbines on birds. These effects include: (1) collision; (2) dis- placement; (3) barrier effects; and (4) habitat loss [7]. Wind turbines pose a high collision risk to some globally threatened large bird species, such as the griffon vulture Gyps fulvus [11], greater white- tailed eagle Haliaeetus albicilla [12], red kite Milvus milvus [13], golden eagle Aquila chrysaetos [14] and greater white-fronted goose Anser albifrons [15]. In addition, wind turbines exert adverse effects on some passerines (Passeriformes), including that of habitat loss and barrier effects [16]. De Lucas et al. [16] re- ported that bird mortality caused by wind turbines is not related to the abundance of bird species within a given area, but to species-specific behavior and to- pography. On the other hand, Smallwood [18] re- ported that since 2010, there has been an increase in the number of bird fatalities caused by wind turbines. Research at the Strait of Gibraltar has shown that bird fatalities caused by wind turbines have been quite low in contrast to those caused by dense migra- tory movements [11]. Whitfield and Madders [19] found a positive correlation between bird mortality rate caused by wind turbines and wind power plant construction. However, Erickson et al. [20] pointed out that bird mortality caused by motor vehicles, highways, and electric power transmission lines are higher than that caused by wind turbines.