We monitored the bat fatalities caused by a 13 turbines wind facility installed in western Puerto Rico (West Indies) over a period of 23 months. The post-construction monitoring includes observed fatalities and a corrected fatality estimate expressed as bats/ turbine/year adjusted for bat carcass removal rates, searcher efficiency, and percent area searched. Data on seasonality of fatalities and distance of carcasses from turbines is also provided. Eleven out of the 13 species of bats in Puerto Rico suffered fatalities, including all five species of phyllostomids. These were: Molossus molossus and Tadarida brasiliensis (Molossidae); Artibeus jamaicensis, Monophyllus redmani, Stenoderma rufum, Brachyphylla cavernarum and Erophylla bombifrons (Phyllostomidae); Noctilio leporinus (Noctilionidae); Eptesicus fuscus and Lasiurus minor (Vespertilionidae); and Mormoops blainvillei (Mormoopidae). This is one of the first published reports of the impact of wind turbines on bats in the Neotropics.
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1 December 2015
Impact of Wind Facilities on Bats in the Neotropics
Armando Rodríguez-Durán,
Waldemar Feliciano-Robles
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Acta Chiropterologica
Vol. 17 • No. 2
December 2015
Vol. 17 • No. 2
December 2015
bats
eolic energy
Molossidae
Mormoopidae
Neotropics
Phyllostomidae
Vespertilionidae