Abstract
Bats collide with wind turbines resulting in fatalities, and much has been learned about the pattern and magnitude of this mortality in the U.S. and Canada (Kunz et al. 2007, Arnett et al. 2008, Arnett and Baerwald 2013, Barclay et al. 2017). Previously, cumulative assessments of this mortality have relied almost entirely on data gleaned from publicly available studies of bat collision fatalities at wind energy facilities (e.g., Arnett and Baerwald 2013). In this report we describe and summarize the bat fatality rate and fatality incident data contained in the American Wind Wildlife Information Center (AWWIC: pronounced “A-wic”), which includes both publicly available and confidential bat collision fatality data from wind energy facilities. We focus on describing the patterns of bat fatalities at wind farms across regions of the U.S. as represented in AWWIC. It is our intention that this report will focus future research evaluating the patterns observed in the data thus furthering our understanding of the variation in risk to bats from wind energy development among species and regions. The current report focuses on data from U.S. wind energy facilities, but we intend to include available data from wind facilities in Canada in future reports. In the process described below, we continue to add data as studies become available and this report will be updated on a regular basis.