Wind turbine blades fly off in storm

The blades, measuring almost 7ft, were blown across a busy road and could have hurt wildlife or caused damage to property as well as endangering life.

The huge turbine blades flew off three structures including one on the aptly-named Windmill Lane in Huddersfield, West Yorks.

The firm who made the damaged turbines in the Hepworth and Upper Cumberworth areas of the town has promised a full investigation.

Concerned villagers in Hepworth warned: "Someone could have been killed," after one of the blades was flung across a road.

Ryan Gill, of manufacturers Evoco, blamed the exceptionally strong winds for the damage.

The Evoco website claims the 10kw turbine has been "specifically designed to reliably deliver high generation performance in harsh wind conditions".

The windmill in Hepworth was ripped apart in the gale force winds. The blades on the 50ft mast are over 6ft long and one flew across a road.

Frances Barnes, who has 10 acres of grazing land for horses close to the Hepworth turbine, said: "It is worrying.

"People objected to the plans when they first went in - not because it is a windmill but because it is so close to a busy road.

"It is frightening to think what may have happened had one of the blades flown into the road and hit a car, or indeed if the wind turbine had come down."

The smaller turbines are increasingly popular as the Government is offering households and communities subsidies to build the structures.

Both large and small turbines have caused problems recently in high winds.

A 330ft £2m turbine burst into flame in Ayrshire last month in storms although it was not even spinning and thought to be an electrical fault.

Another structure the same size came crashing down in Coldingham in the Scottish borders during the December storms.

However Fraser McLachlan, the chief executive of GCube, a wind turbine insurer, said no one has been injured by a turbine in the last decade, when most of the wind farms were built.

“It does happen but by the very nature of where wind farms are - they are usually in very sparsely populated spots and therefore the risk of damage to property or to people risk is very very low,” he said.

Renewable UK, the trade association for the wind industry, said incidents of turbines causing damage are very, very rare around the world.

Littering and starting wild fires. All good fun?

Chinese lanterns pose a threat as well as littering the countryside
November 2011. A while ago Wildlife Extra supported a campaign to stop balloon releases as they litter the countryside and can be lethal to marine life. In recent years another, potentially more dangerous, littering fad has become popular in the UK and elsewhere.

If I suggested that it would be fun to throw a burning plastic bag out of a car window you might think I am mad - Yet so called Magic or Chinese lanterns are becoming increasingly popular.

The Sussex Wildlife Trust report than an owl has been found dead inside a Chinese Lantern, and that in July alone the coastguard had no less than 12 alerts caused by Chinese lanterns - yet there are no rules and regulations covering their usage or manufacturing standards.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/chinese-lantern.html

Environmentalists hunt wildlife-killing nurdles

Environmental regulators walked gingerly along the San Leandro shoreline Friday, keeping a sharp eye out for the elusive wildlife killer known as the "nurdle."

"I've got one," said Jared Blumenfeld, regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, after scooping one out of a worker's net. There, in his palm, was a tiny white pellet.

Nurdles are the tiny bits of plastic that are melted down and used in the production of plastic bags, bubble wrap, packaging and wrapping material. They may sound cuddly and nonthreatening, but they are believed to be responsible for the sickness and death of thousands of fish and birds in the region that have mistaken them for food.

The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, State Water Resources Control Board and the EPA have targeted four San Leandro plastic manufacturers in a first-in-the-nation effort to halt the rampant spillage of the pellets, hundreds of thousands of which have washed into storm drains that flow into San Francisco Bay.

"It's a very big problem," Blumenfeld said during Friday's first mandated nurdle cleanup operation at Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro. "We're looking at the practices of companies that have a great deal of these nurdles and we're making sure they are contained."

Three plastic bag manufacturing companies and one automobile bumper manufacturer have been ordered to develop procedures to prevent future spillage of pellets. The companies also have to conduct cleanup operations during high tides at nearby Oyster Bay, where the local storm drains empty out. The wetland around Oyster Bay, where workers were using pool skimmers Friday to capture the nurdles, is prime habitat for the endangered California clapper rail and salt marsh harvest mouse.

As mitigation for the pellets that were already spilled and can't be recovered, the companies have to clean up litter on the shoreline between Sept. 1 and Feb. 1 for the next two years.

Ironically, one of the bag manufacturers produced a plastic sack with the phrase "Don't Trash California Bags."

Regulators have known about the problem ever since a giant floating patch of plastic - including nurdles and other debris - twice the size of Texas was found in an area of the Pacific Ocean known as the North Pacific Gyre.

Read on ...

Study reveals alarm bells for Amazonian wildlife

The Amazon is currently experiencing the highest absolute rate of forest loss globally. Yet the proportion of Amazonian species assessed as ‘threatened’ with extinction on the IUCN Red List is below the global average. This list is used to set conservation priorities, and contributes to assessments of the state of the planet’s biodiversity. A new study is changing this picture.

A group of authors from the BirdLife International Partnership used an existing model that predicts where in the Amazon deforestation is projected to take place in the coming years under different scenarios to reassess the Red List status of all 814 forest-dependent Amazonian bird species. Their findings have been published today in the journal Diversity and Distributions. [1]

Using this model, the number of species qualifying as threatened rises substantially from just 24 (3% of species assessed) to 64–92 (8–11%), depending on different forest loss scenarios. The number of species ‘of conservation concern’ (threatened plus Near Threatened species) increases from 60 to 117–172 species. Of particular concern are the species that appear to qualify for uplisting (i.e. at greater risk of extinction than thought) to Critically Endangered or Endangered, such as Hoary-throated Spinetail Synallaxis kollari and Varzea Piculet Picumnus varzeae, as these are the species projected to decline fastest because they will lose suitable habitat most rapidly.

Incorporating projected deforestation into assessments provides a more accurate reflection of the extinction risk facing species in the region. The revised estimates of extinction risk to Amazonian birds brings them closer in line with the global average of 12% of birds considered threatened.
By overlaying distribution maps for these apparently threatened species, the authors identified ‘crisis areas’ (areas of forest that are projected to be lost, but which support the highest numbers of threatened species) and ‘refugia’ (areas projected to retain forest, but which support the highest numbers of threatened species). Over half of the most important areas for threatened species are currently legally protected, including two thirds of refugia. But the unprotected areas should be priorities for new protected areas, particularly the ’crisis’ areas where important forest will be lost imminently, such as those in the Brazilian states of Rondonia, Mato Grosso and Para.

“It is clear that until now we have underestimated the risk of extinction that many of the Amazon’s species are facing”, said lead author Jeremy Bird of BirdLife International. “Now we have a better understanding, not only of the species that are threatened with extinction, but also the most irreplaceable and imperilled pockets of the Amazon’s remaining forest that we must protect in order to conserve its wildlife."

“As far as we are aware, no Amazonian bird species has been driven to extinction by human activities yet”, he added. “To ensure that none are, and that other groups of wildlife survive too, further investment is needed to protect effectively the priority areas of remaining habitat.”

[1] Integrating spatially explicit habitat projections into extinction risk assessments: a reassessment of Amazonian avifauna incorporating projected deforestation, Jeremy P. Bird, Graeme M. Buchanan, Alexander C. Lees, Rob P. Clay, Pedro F. Develey, Itala Ye´pez and Stuart H. M. Butchart.

http://www.birdlife.org/community/2011/09/study-rings-alarm-bells-for-amazonian-wildlife/

 

Vast toxic tailing ponds in Canada threaten a huge swathe of Canadian wilderness.

Canada's wilderness endangered October 2010. As the mixture of red sludge and alkaline water from the breach of a waste dam at a Hungarian alumina plant reached the Danube, Canadian campaigners have pointed out that tar sands operations inside Canada's Boreal Forest threaten to destroy or fragment vast lakes, rivers, forests and wetlands that provide nesting grounds for millions of birds.

Area the size of Florida under threat
Roughly 14 million hectares of boreal bird habitat, an area more than 7 times the size of Wales, could eventually be developed for tar sand operations, including strip mining, deep drilling operations and toxic tailings ponds.

Vast toxic reservoirs
Nearly a dozen massive tailings ponds, some several kilometres across, line both sides of the Athabasca River. Filled with toxic waste, many ponds are already leaking and creating their own tainted wetlands. Fish, birds and other wildlife face death from swimming or drinking from the ponds.

1600 ducks killed
Two years ago, more than 1,600 ducks died when they landed on a pond filled with toxic waste. As more waterfowl and shorebirds begin migration journeys thousands of kilometres long, they face death from swimming in or drinking from the pond
http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/toxic-tailings.html

Vast toxic tailing ponds in Canada threaten a huge swathe of Canadian wilderness.

Canada's wilderness endangered October 2010. As the mixture of red sludge and alkaline water from the breach of a waste dam at a Hungarian alumina plant reached the Danube, Canadian campaigners have pointed out that tar sands operations inside Canada's Boreal Forest threaten to destroy or fragment vast lakes, rivers, forests and wetlands that provide nesting grounds for millions of birds.

Area the size of Florida under threat
Roughly 14 million hectares of boreal bird habitat, an area more than 7 times the size of Wales, could eventually be developed for tar sand operations, including strip mining, deep drilling operations and toxic tailings ponds.

Vast toxic reservoirs
Nearly a dozen massive tailings ponds, some several kilometres across, line both sides of the Athabasca River. Filled with toxic waste, many ponds are already leaking and creating their own tainted wetlands. Fish, birds and other wildlife face death from swimming or drinking from the ponds.

1600 ducks killed
Two years ago, more than 1,600 ducks died when they landed on a pond filled with toxic waste. As more waterfowl and shorebirds begin migration journeys thousands of kilometres long, they face death from swimming in or drinking from the pond
http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/toxic-tailings.html