It's as simple as one painted blade.

That's it.

Paint one rotor blade of a wind turbine black, and you'll save 70% of the birds that would have otherwise perished prior to the paint.

Over the course of a three year study, scientists determined that by painting one blade of a wind turbine black, it can dramatically reduce the number of bird deaths from turbine impacts.

The team of scientists started small and painted one blade of four different turbines black. It sounds like the most basic and easy fix, but the data shows that it really does work. They monitored the turbines along with a control group of four turbines that remained all white. After three years, they crunched the numbers and the conclusion was obvious. The turbines that were partially painted saw a reduction in bird deaths of over 71%.

However, scientists stress more research is needed, as curiously, the data also showed some season variance, meaning in the spring and in the fall fewer deaths from the turbines with a painted blade were reported, but higher deaths in the summer.

Overall, the times when the deaths were reduced were enough to dramatically offset the final tally, showing a net improvement.

As the scale of the testing was very small, only eight turbines, but as we can attest around these here Columbia Basin parts, wind turbine farms and the massive rotors that go with them are here to stay, nay, they will only continue to multiply and it's great to know moving forward how an incredibly simple fix can potentially make a massive difference.

Story source here.

Rolling Stones "Paint it Black" here.

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