Interactions between seabirds and offshore wind farms: knowledge, context and solutions on the French coast. Rochefort, January, 2013

Inexhaustible, wind provides energy less compromising to the future of the planet and wind turbines are now multiplying at sea, especially over the North European Atlantic frontage. In response to the Grenelle Environment Forum and to the objective of 23% of renewable energies in 2020, France is investing in this sector to concretize its energetics ambitions: the country has a great potential of wind and the northwest French coasts are particularly adapted to aero-generators posed, single solution currently usable at sea. Despite benefits for man, the activity of offshore wind interacts with seabirds and marine habitats they use: turbines and birds are competing for the aerial maritime space. As demonstrated with terrestrial wind farms, this human activity at sea generates multiple impacts on species, which is why the use of this technology should not interfere with efforts to conserve marine biodiversity. Thus, the LPO, through the FAME program, became interested to the first offshore wind farm projects on the French coasts and has proposed to each environmental responsible a support to their project. The challenge is to identify, in terms of functional link between birds and a project area, the impacts caused on seabirds. However, because of the diversity of factors involved in the ecosystem (species, areas, weather, etc.), the novelty of the activity at sea and the technological improvement of wind turbines, threats to seabirds remain largely unknown and an evaluation of impacts caused by a project is, to date, not completely exhaustive. However, there are many measures of environmental integration, but their effectiveness depends on many factors. Generally, migrant birds are more affected than sedentary birds, which gradually would accustom to these structures, but there are few data and certainty on the impact of wind farms for each species of seabirds. The requirement of adequate environmental measures should be more respected than the project sites are located close to existing SPAs, some being even included. Vigilance must not be less towards others because some projects are in the vicinity of marine areas non-included in SPAs who nevertheless showed high numbers of birds (FAME report - Coastal monitoring, 2013). In addition, the cumulative impacts on seabirds, resulting from all human activities at sea, complicate yet analysis of the impacts generated only by offshore wind. (authors)