ENDESA S A : A study by Endesa shows that wind farms are compatible with wild mammals

• Over twelve months, the company used 46 camera traps to record the movements of fauna in six facilities in Galicia and another six in Ávila.

Wind farms do not alter the lives of wild mammals that live in the countryside. This is the conclusion of a scientific study using camera traps that was carried out by Endesa over a period of twelve months at its facilities in Galicia and Ávila. Wildlife exists in the same quantity and follows the same habits in the wind farms as in the surrounding environment, as has been shown after monitoring by experts from outside the company.

The study carried out by Endesa-the first of its kind to be carried out in Spain-is significant both for the knowledge it provides and for its uniqueness, since attention to fauna in wind farm environments usually focuses only on birds and bats. During the first four months, the biologists surveyed all of the eighteen wind farms that Endesa manages in Galicia through its renewable energy subsidiary, Enel Green Power Spain. In Ávila, data was collected at six wind farms over a period of twelve months.

Using the information collected in Galicia, the specialists selected the six wind farms that were most representative of the different habitats in the community: Barbanza (Pobra do Caramiñal and Porto do Son), Capelada (Cedeira, Cariño and Ortigueira), Coto Teixido (As Pontes), Faladoira (As Pontes and Mañón), Leboreiro (Muras) and Touriñán (Aranga and Monfero). At these facilities, they continued collecting information during the twelve months of the campaign, which ran between February 2019 and January 2020.

In Ávila, the monitoring was carried out over twelve months, between August 2019 and August 2020, at six wind farms: Aldeavieja (Santa María del Cubillo), Altos de Cartagena (Las Navas del Marqués), Navazuelo (Las Navas del Marqués), Valdihuelo (Urraca Miguel), Lanchal (San Juan de la Nava) and Pucheruelo (San Juan de la Nava).

The field work consisted of obtaining photographic evidence of the presence of mammals in different parts of the wind farms that the biologists had identified as suitable areas for feeding, reproduction or shelter for fauna. For this purpose, they placed 46 cameras, of three different models, that were triggered by means of motion sensors. The devices were checked and the data downloaded every month.