BioDiv: Modeling the Distribution, Abundance, Survival and Collision Risk of Raptors With Wind Turbines

Growing global wind energy is critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but poorly sited wind farms can pose significant threats to bird populations, particularly raptors. Proper siting, avoiding areas with high bird densities and critical habitats, is essential to minimising these risks. However, current practice in the former Soviet Union often suffers from inadequate environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and poor siting, leading to detrimental effects on vulnerable bird species. One of the perceived problems is the lack of knowledge among developers when preparing Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs). This paper presents a workflow for calculating bird strike risks associated with wind turbines, spanning from data collection to risk modeling, to mitigate these issues. The proposed methodology covers several key stages: preparation for field studies, their implementation to collect data on bird distribution, activity and flight characteristics, preparation of the collected data for modeling, modeling of species distribution to create habitat maps, assessment of bird abundance and distribution, assessment of nest survival and, finally, calculation of the risk of bird collisions with wind turbines. To facilitate this process, the BioDiv software is presented, developed to help Russian-speaking ecologists and zoologists, and is easy to use for data preparation, processing, and modeling (SDM, CRM). The program aims to simplify complex modeling procedures, enabling a more accurate assessment of the distribution and abundance of bird populations and their vulnerability to wind farms in the proposed project areas.