electrocution and collisions as mortality factors:...
TRANSCRIPT
ELECTROCUTION AND COLLISIONS AS MORTALITY FACTORS: FROM RESEARCH TO MITIGATION MEASURES
Stoycho Stoychev, Vladimir Dobrev
Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds / BirdLife Bulgaria
From Protecting power lines from birds to Protecting birds from power lines
• During 1970s and 1980s in Bulgaria most of the efforts focused on prevention outages of high tension (110 kV, 220 kV) transmission lines
First steps and challenges in 2002-2005
Stoychev&Karafeizov, 2003. Power line design and raptor protection in Bulgaria
• Analyses of power line poles indicated 20 kV lines pose high electrocution risk
• Bird electrocutions and collisions was not considered as significant conservation problem due to lack of systematic data
• Technical staff of the grid operators did not recognize or neglected the problem
First systematic research carried out in key sites for the Eastern Imperial Eagle (Aquila heliaca)
First quantitative results on bird mortality on power lines
• Study period: September 2004 - December 2005
• 127,8 km 20 kV power lines
• 105 dead birds from 21 species, 77.1% electrocuted
23%
21%20%
7%
29%
Falconiformes
Ciconiiformes
Passeriformes
Coraciiformes
Corvide
Save the Raptors LIFE+ project
The Survey
• 25 overhead power lines
• 204,1 km
• 6 Natura 2000 sites / SPAs
• April 2009 - January 2010
• 292 fatalities
• 68,5 % electrocution
• 31,5 % collision
www.SaveRaptors.org
Electrocution Collision
Mortality caused by electrocution and collision
www.SaveRaptors.org
The real number of fatalities is much higher!
www.SaveRaptors.org
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Which poles are most hazardous?
• Over 10,000 hazardous poles within the 27 Imperial Eagle breeding territories
Imperial Eagle satellite telemetry – 27 tagged individuals
www.SaveRaptors.org
Photo: O.Oltun
67% of tagged juvenile IE have been electrocuted
www.SaveRaptors.org
595 poles within Imperial Eagle breeding territories have been insulated.
www.SaveRaptors.org
Developed collaboration and trust resulted in a larger project
• EVN Bulgaria and BSPB started LIFE for Safe Grid project
• Budget: 2, 576 011 euro provided by EVN Bulgaria, EC provides 1,399 716 euro
• 50 km of 20 kV overhead power lines were converted into underground cable
• 15 km of bare cables were replaced with insulated ones
• 2,740 poles will be retrofitted with insulation caps
• The project sustains and multiplies the results of the current efforts securing over 80% of the Bulgarian Imperial eagle population
www.LifeForSafeGrid.bg
Egyptian Vulture
• Globally threatened raptor
• Often perch on power line poles
• National population decreases from 57 to 28 pairs for 10 years
First significant work done not in Bulgaria but in Sudan
• Studying the literature we found out that a deadly powerline may exist in Sudan
• First data for 55 dead Egyptian vultures collected by the German ornithologist Gerhard Nikolaus in 1982-1983
• 20 years later (2004) he discovered 5 more dead Egyptian vultures
• Expedition of BSPB and SWS discovered 17 dead Egyptian vultures in 2010
Sudanese “killer line” issue solved
• The power line from Port Sudan to the Red Sea coast has been made safe for birds
• This action of the Sudanese government and power company officials follows years of work by BSPB (BirdLife in Bulgaria), BirdLife, Migratory Soaring Birds project and the Sudanese Wildlife Society.
www.LifeNeophron.eu
First study focused on vultures in Bulgaria initiated in the frame of Save Neophron LIFE project
Methodology
• We mapped all electricity pylons in the medium voltage (20 kW) within a buffer of 5 km around active Egyptian vulture nests.
Data collected:
• the exact type of pylon according to a guidelines created in the framework of this action for pylon identification and classification;
• the location of each pylon (coordinates taken with a GPS device);
• habitat where the pylon was situated;
• photograph of the pylon;
• presence and species of dead birds found under studied electricity pylons.
www.LifeNeophron.eu
Risk assessment methodology
• Need to assess the risk of electrocution for each single pylon . We developed a scoring algorithm to rank the pylons according to the threat they represent.
• Electrocution risk at each pylon was assessed based on the combination of 6 criteria, considered important for the species. For each criteria a score ranging from 0 to 3 was given, based on whether it presented 'no risk' (0), 'low risk' (1), 'medium risk' (2), or 'high risk' (3).
• The total score for electrocution risk of pylon was then calculated by summing up the risk scores for all six criteria, weighed by the relative importance of each criteria.
www.LifeNeophron.eu
Risk assessment methodology
• The following criteria were considered (range of risk ): • - (A) pylon type (1=other pylons, 2= vulnurable pylon type, 3=critical pylon
type, ) • - (B) observed accidents (2=no observed accidents, 3= observed
accidents) • - (C )proximity to foraging areas (0= >1000 m, 1= 600-999, 2= 300-599 3=
<300 m) • - (D) proximity to the nest (0= >1500 m, 1= 1000-1499, 2= 500-999, 3=
<500m) • - (E ) habitat (0=pylon in water bodies, industrial areas or city, mines; 1=
forests, croplands, vineyards, dunes; 2= rocks, open areas with dominant open natural habitats; 3 = pylon in open pasture land or other foraging habitat or a dump site)
• - (F )vicinity to nearest asphalt roads (0= >300m, 1= 200-299, 2= 100-199, 3= <100 m).
www.LifeNeophron.eu
Risk assessment methodology
• The relative importance of each criteria was weighed on a scale from 0-1 based on previous expertise and evidence from the literature (Demerdzhiev 2014). Pylon type and distance to the nest were considered the most important criterions and were given a weight of 0.22, following by proximity to foraging areas which was weighted by 0.20. Habitat where the pylon is situated received a lower weigh of 0.18, following by observed accidents which received a lower weight of 0.13 and the relatively low weight of 0.04 for vicinity to asphalt roads.
• Therefore, the total pylon risk score was calculated as follows:
• Pylon Risk= 0.22*A + 0.13*B + 0.20*C + 0.22*D + 0.18*E + 0.04*F
• where A, B, C, D, E and F are the risk scores (0-3) for each of the six criteria A-F.
www.LifeNeophron.eu
Risk assessment methodology
The Pylons were then categorized as follows:
• Low risk pylons – Score < 1.2
• Medium risk pylons – Score between 1.2 and 1.39
• High risk pylons – Score between 1.4 and 1.69
• Very high risk pylons – Score > 1.7
www.LifeNeophron.eu
Pole types identified
www.LifeNeophron.eu
Very dangerous – pin type insulators middle (low) tension power line
Pole types identified
www.LifeNeophron.eu
Relatively safe – hang insulators
Collisions with wind turbines
www.LifeNeophron.eu
• Griffon vulture is especially vulnerable
• Population level risks established for Black vulture in Greece (Vasilakis et al, 2017)
• Significant mortality of Egyptian vulture established in Tarifa, Spain
Collisions may be significant threat for some species at some sites
Collisions with wind turbines
• Griffon vulture is especially vulnerable
• Population level risks established for Black vulture in Greece (Vasilakis et al, 2017)
• Significant mortality of Egyptian vulture established in Tarifa, Spain
Raising awareness and advocacy
• Bird electrocution and collisions is recognized as a significant problem by environmental authorities and grid operators
• Established cooperation between BSPB and electric grid operators ESO, EVN, ENERGO– PRO and CEZ
• Ministry of Environment and Water organized meeting and initiate discussion on introducing regulation about converting of electric infrastructure hazardous for wild birds
• Grid operator started to invest their own recourses into retrofitting medium voltage (20 kV) power lines
Significant challenges
• There is no regulation to force grid operators to build safe powerlines
• New dangerous powerline are built
• In some cases relatively safe power lines are replaced with dangerous ones
• More than 20 000 risky pylons remain in key sates for globally threatened raptors
www.bspb.org
Thank you for your
attention!
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