Blaming the wind? The impact of wind turbine on bird biodiversity

Lina Meng, Pengfei Liu, Yinggang Zhou and Yingdan Mei

Journal of Development Economics, 2025, vol. 172, issue C

Abstract: We quantitatively assess the impacts of onshore wind turbines on bird diversity using citizen science data in China. Results show that a one-standard-deviation increase in wind turbines reduces bird abundance by 9.75% and leads to a 12.2% reduction in bird species richness at the county level. The negative impacts are more significant in migrant birds, birds in forests, urban and farmlands than others. Biodiversity protection helps to safeguard bird abundance against wind turbines. We also find that habitat loss rather than food chain change after the wind turbine installations contributes to biodiversity loss. The net impact of wind turbines on the environment is positive when considering the carbon reduction effects.

Keywords: Wind turbines; Bird biodiversity; Habitat loss; Food chain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387824001512
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:172:y:2025:i:c:s0304387824001512

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103402

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().