Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

How do you balance the needs of wildlife and habitat, with wind energy? Find out this month and next on the TPW TV series: Producer Abe Moore.

One of the areas we go is up in the Panhandle, where wind energy is threatening tall grass prairies and the Lesser prairie Chicken, which is there; and it’s got biologists a little concerned.

They don’t do well with change on the landscape. We think that we’re displacing or moving a nesting female away from where she wants to be, and we don’t have much habitat left for her to go to.

We also do a second part on wind energy and we go down to the coast, where wind energy is being developed even faster than in the Panhandle. And, it’s a concern because it’s in the Central Flyway where millions of birds migrate through. So you have all these birds and you’re putting wind turbines in there. So there’s a balance there. We talk with Penescal Wind Farm down there. And they have a radar system set up where they can see the birds coming before they get there.

The radar itself generates a curtailment command, and in less than one minute all the turbines will be turning at less than one RPM. And in within five minutes, all of them are completely stationary.

So, both on the coast, and on the Panhandle, it comes down to habitat issues and trying to site them in the right place.

That’s our show… with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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