Juan M. Perez Garcia from the University of Lleida, Spain, will present the Department of Biological Science seminar with a talk entitled, "Use of raptors as indicator species for the management of wildlife-energy infrastructure conflicts". 

Abstract: 

The high levels of human demands of resources have led to the need to find new sources of more sustainable energy. In this context, the production and distribution of energy from renewable sources has emerged as one of the greatest opportunities for development, reducing the consumption of non-renewable products and, also greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, renewable energy development, production and distribution on power lines have substantial environmental consequences. A major difficulty in assessing the impact of human on bird populations is the scarcity of long-term studies at operational wind farms, and the continental and global-scale population dynamics of many species of wildlife killed at energy facilities. This is especially the case for long lived with low productivity, as is the case with many endangered or rare long-lived species such as raptors. In this sense, identifying indicator species would help to improve and optimize infrastructure impact monitoring. The use of network analysis to select indicator species has emerged as a very useful to optimize the monitoring of infrastructure impacts, especially on complex or understudied communities because it does not require detailed information on the biology and population sizes of the species. This talk presents two examples in which raptors have been used as indicator species to monitor and manage bird mortality in human infrastructures: first, to detect and design high-risk areas of bird electrocution on power lines, and second to identify high risk turbines from in wind farms. In both cases, the use of raptors reduced monitoring costs and increased the effectiveness of conservation actions.