Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by internetter 901 days ago
Cats kill between 1.3 and 4.0 billion birds a year: https://dariuszzdziebk.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/upload...

— Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute & U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

From https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds

- Wind turbines kill something around a million birds every year

- Power lines kill something around 25 times that

- And "A 2012 study found that wind projects kill 0.269 birds per gigawatt-hour of electricity produced, compared to 5.18 birds killed per gigawatt-hour of electricity from fossil fuel projects"

1 comments

Well one thing that occurred to me is this argument could hold water if the wind turbines somehow drastically differ in the kinds of birds they kill. E.g. if they kill a million of some rare species that’s not killed by anything else that could be different. But I haven’t seen any data on that.
I think it's talked about fairly often. Wind turbines kill many more raptors (eagles and hawks) than cats do. Here's some data: https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/02/19/number-of-eagles-kil...