Characterization of bat movement patterns to inform the decision-making process about the potential risks of local wind energy developments on bat populations

在过去的十年里，可能没有其他哺乳动物群体面临着与食虫蝙蝠一样的长期生存风险。这些人口面临的主要威胁之一是风力涡轮机发电设施。许多风力发电场上的涡轮机正在杀死大量的蝙蝠，以至于每年有数千只蝙蝠被这些设施杀死。人们对该物种抵御这些死亡的影响的能力有很大的担忧。从物种类型来看，那些经历长距离年度迁徙的蝙蝠(例如，白发、红发和银发蝙蝠)似乎最容易受到风力发电场开发的影响，因为它们占死亡人数的最大比例。然而，大量短途迁徙的蝙蝠也被捕杀(例如，常年冬眠的蝙蝠种类，如小棕色蝙蝠和北方长耳蝙蝠)。到目前为止，北美已经就这一问题进行了大量研究，但大多数工作都是在建议的或实际的地点(即当地规模)进行的，以回应环境影响评估过程的监管要求。为了证明这一方法的合理性，必须做出许多有问题的假设。该行业需要的一个主要信息缺口是温带地区全年栖息蝙蝠的区域活动模式的特征。因此，该项目的目标是通过填补这一信息空白来帮助行业。我们将跟踪单个蝙蝠，并根据遗传特征确定种群结构，让决策者更好地了解在特定地区选址风电场的潜在风险。我们相信，这个项目的结果将使业界了解蝙蝠在不同距离和不同路径上移动的频率和分布，从而更有效地规划他们的绿色能源发展，以满足政府的目标。

In the past decade there are probably no other group of mammals experiencing the same level of risk to their long term viability as the insectivorous bats. One of the main threats to these populations are electricity- generating wind turbine facilities. Turbines on many wind farms are killing large numbers of bats such that annually many thousands of bats are killed by these facilities. There are major concerns about the ability of the species to withstand the impacts of these mortalities. By species type, it seems that those that undergo long -distance annual migrations (e.g., hoary, red and silver-haired bats) are most vulnerable to wind farm developments as they make up the largest proportion of the mortalities. However, a significant number of bats that undertake short-distance migrations are also killed (e.g., the year- round resident bat species that hibernate such as little brown and northern long-eared bats). To this point there has been a large amount of research done in North America on the issue but most of this work has been conducted at proposed or actual sites (i.e., local scale) in response to the regulatory requirements of the environmental impact assessment process. There are a number of questionable assumptions that have to be made to justify this approach. A major information gap that is required by the industry, is a characterization of the regional movement patterns of year-round resident bats of temperate areas. Hence, the goal of this project is to assist industry by filling this information gap. We will track individual bats and genetically characterize population structure to give decision-makers a better understanding of the potential risks of locating wind farms in particular areas. We believe that the results of this project will inform industry about the frequency and distribution of bat movements over different distances and along different pathways and therefore permit more efficient planning of their green energy developments to meet government targets.