Santiago de Compostela, Mar 29 (EFE).- Without uncomfortable witnesses for large energy corporations, the development of offshore wind energy in foreign waters (more than 14 miles from the coast) seems to have all the ingredients to translate into “a crime perfect” that threatens the millions of birds that frequent the migratory corridor and the wintering area located in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula.
That’s how clear at least the heads of the main Galician environmental organizations are, who are convinced that the high seas area off Galicia can become a deadly funnel for millions of birds of different species due to the installation of wind turbines. out to sea.
“Unfortunately, very little is still known about the importance of outer waters for both seabirds and non-seabirds, as naturalists do not go there. Only professional scientific research can go that far, through personnel, boats, time and adequate budgets”, several conservation groups maintain in a manifesto.
In statements to Efe, the president of the Galician Ornithology Society, Óscar Rivas, affirmed that the damage that offshore wind infrastructure can cause “is very high, because this area of the Galician coast is a strategic place in terms of flow migration of birds, and it is also unknown how these facilities can affect marine mammals.
“As there are no studies that reveal what happens beyond the vicinity of the coast, the precautionary principle must be respected,” he says.
Until now, thanks to a large extent to the disinterested work of naturalists (who record the movements of these birds from capes, especially from Estaca de Bares, with data from half a century ago), Science and the public in general can know the impressive dimensions of the phenomenon of the movements of seabirds in the waters closest to land, which are even beginning to take the form of a tourist resource in certain areas.
But the same is not the case with the marine area off the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, an extensive area “of extraordinary importance, at a European, Atlantic and even global level”, as a migratory corridor and wintering area for millions of marine and non-marine birds. in migration, frequently nocturnal, of numerous species, explains Rivas.
It is well documented, according to conservation groups, that the risk of bird collisions with wind turbines is higher in places with large numbers of migratory birds, which, in addition, along with wintering birds, have higher mortality rates than resident birds.
“But something like that will not be possible for offshore wind farms. There will be no uncomfortable witnesses for the big energy corporations”, the conservation groups point out in a joint manifesto.
“With the exception of a couple of international NGOs, no association has the human, technical and economic means to carry out these studies on the high seas. There will be almost no corpses, as they will be quickly dispersed by sea currents”, they add.
In this sense, he states that from the studies carried out by oil slicks, it is known that only 10% of the affected birds reach the coasts. “The ingredients of a perfect crime,” they lament.
For this reason, the conservationists demand that, “in application of the principle of prudence”, any planning of offshore wind farms in the northwestern sector of the Iberian Peninsula must previously have, at least, a complete prior study of the seasonal distribution of the populations of the different species of seabirds that use this area, as well as the land birds that cross it on their migrations.
A study, they demand, that “must be public and independent, and extend over several years, in order to obtain information about the wide variability of the interannual presence in these waters of the different species.”
Environmentalists cry out against the errors of the Maritime Space Management Plans (POEM), approved by the Government in February of this year, relating to the five Spanish marine demarcations: North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Strait and Alboran, Levantine-Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands .
For Galician conservationists, in the specific case of the North Atlantic demarcation, the POEMs propose as ‘areas of high potential for the conservation of biodiversity’ a succession of areas close to land, but “unacceptably ignoring the precautionary principle”, since it includes a good part of the external waters in five ‘zones of high potential for the development of offshore wind energy’.
The technical secretary of ADEGA (Association for the Ecological Defense of Galiza), Fins Eirexas, recalled in statements to EFE that the Government “committed” to carry out its own planning for the possible development of offshore wind power on the state coasts, “not a glancing plan stuck in a mixed bag called POEM and in which neither the cauldrons nor the impact on the marine habitat are taken into account, for example”.
“We live on one of the world’s coastlines with the highest intensity of migratory passage of birds and cetaceans and this is not taken into account, and these gaps (in reference to the lack of reports from the POEM) are not minor issues, these issues are those that determine if a plan is sustainable or not, and in this case it is a very alarming myopia”, he criticizes.
Eirexas clarifies that his organization is not opposed to the development of offshore wind, but clarifies that it must be developed “wherever it is needed”, and clarifies that Galicia is not the case, “and where it does not compromise resources as important as marine ecosystems, since they are the ones to eat and the ones that produce most of the oxygen on earth because they sequester most of the carbon”.