First up is Stewart Fefer of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Bird concentration areas, flyways, and seasonal nesting or breeding areas are of particular concern. Thousands of offshore surveys have been conducted in the Gulf of Maine thanks to interest in past decades in offshore oil exploration.
Over lunch I was able to download some images from the morning's presentations. Here's the previously-mentioned map of bird flight paths before and after an offshore wind project:
Fefer points out that birds' avoidance of turbines may be problematic if turbines block bird migration corridors.
Fefer's final recommendations to developers: Avoid bird concentration areas and mitigate by addressing other challenges to bird populations: overfishing of birds' food supplies, collisions between birds and ships, extirpation, etcetera.
Next up is Pete Didisheim of the Natural Resources Council of Maine. He's talking about the need to keep the big picture in mind - our obsolete energy infrastructure, our carbon emissions crisis, air toxins from coal burning - in addition to the consideration of little-picture impacts caused by construction of wind or ocean turbines.
NRCM: We need as much low-carbon generation as possible to lower the overall impact. Wind power is part of the solution.
Eight projects in the pipeline for Maine: two permitted and about to begin construction (Stetson and Kibby Mountain). Successful projects have mitigation strategies: Stetson appeased fishing guides by protecting a local watershed and contributing to a land trust; Kibby Mt. agreed to protect sensitive alpine zones nearby.
They're opening it up for questions after those two questions ... please comment if you'd like to participate from wherever you are.
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