Fairly often, in cities, rural areas, and alongside roads, we see birds perched on energy traces. For many individuals, this picture is a part of the on a regular basis panorama: a chook resting on an influence line, or small teams resting on poles and buildings. However what seems to be a typical scene from the bottom is, from the air, a part of a way more complicated relationship between infrastructure, territory, and wildlife.
Electrical grids join cities, ports, industries, houses, and important companies. However a transmission line isn’t merely plotted on a clean map: it crosses residing territories the place communities, ecosystems, and species that depend upon the panorama’s connectivity coexist. For thousands and thousands of birds, these landscapes embody habitats, foraging areas, resting areas, nesting websites, and flight paths to finishing their life cycles. Subsequently, each new line not solely defines a route for vitality but in addition raises a call about the right way to combine improvement with the encompassing ecosystems. When not correctly deliberate, designed, or managed, this infrastructure can disrupt that connectivity and improve dangers to wildlife, particularly birds.
This coexistence will turn out to be more and more essential. Within the Fifties, Latin America and the Caribbean was house to round 160 million people, most of whom lived in rural areas. In the present day, the area has greater than 660 million inhabitants, and over 80% of them reside in cities. In just some a long time, the area not solely grew; it additionally remodeled the best way it produces, strikes, trades, and consumes vitality.
This transformation has positioned rising strain on energy methods and helps clarify why regional electrical energy demand is anticipated to proceed rising within the a long time forward. In line with the International Energy Agency (IEA), demand might improve by practically 90% by 2050 underneath present insurance policies, and by as a lot as 180% if introduced local weather pledges are met, pushed by the electrification of transport, business, and different key sectors of the vitality transition.
Responding to this improve won’t rely solely on producing extra electrical energy, however on having networks able to delivering it safely, reliably, and effectively to the place it’s wanted. However as this infrastructure turns into more and more crucial to regional improvement, there may be additionally a rising have to design it with larger consideration to the territories it crosses. For birds, this attitude is particularly essential as a result of energy traces can turn out to be a barrier or a risk inside landscapes that many species use to maneuver, feed, relaxation, or reproduce.
For birds, essentially the most direct dangers related to energy traces are normally electrocution and collision. Electrocution happens primarily when a chook comes into contact with energized elements; collision happens when wires or buildings intersect with its flight paths. However the stage of danger shouldn’t be the identical in each case: it is dependent upon the design of the road, the panorama it crosses, the species current, and the way birds transfer by means of that territory.
Even seemingly easy elements can improve vulnerability. On wet days, for instance, moist plumage can improve the chance of electrocution as a result of water facilitates electrical conductivity. Equally, in areas the place some species transfer at night time, the low visibility of infrastructure can improve the chance of collision, particularly when traces or buildings will not be simply detectable in low-light situations. These sorts of particulars remind us that prevention can not depend on generic options: it should reply to the native context, the species current, and the precise situations of every website.
The dimensions of the problem is made clear in a latest report on power lines and wildlife by the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Though Latin America and the Caribbean nonetheless lack a consolidated regional estimate, the report presents figures that assist illustrate the size of the issue: in the USA alone, collisions with energy traces might trigger between eight and 57 million chook deaths every year, whereas electrocution might account for as much as 64 million. These figures shouldn’t be immediately extrapolated to the area, however they do present why prevention from the planning and design phases is vital.
Chongón–Posorja: Strategic Infrastructure in a Important Hall
In Latin America, this sort of prevention is starting to take form in concrete tasks. One in all them is positioned on Ecuador’s southwestern coast: the Lago de Chongón–Posorja Transmission Line. The challenge is a part of an funding of roughly USD 200 million led by the Improvement Financial institution of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) and the Ecuadorian Electrical energy Company (CELEC), the general public firm liable for energy technology and transmission within the nation.
Its function is to attach hydropower technology with shrimp farming complexes alongside Ecuador’s coast, decreasing dependence on fossil fuels and contributing to the nation’s vitality safety. As with different renewable vitality tasks, together with wind and photo voltaic, the problem doesn’t finish with producing cleaner vitality. It additionally includes constructing networks able to transmitting that vitality whereas decreasing, from the design stage, their impacts on the encompassing setting and ecosystems.
That is the place science, conservation, and finance converge round a concrete proposal: the Americas Flyways Initiative (AFI). Led by Audubon, BirdLife Worldwide, and CAF, the initiative works on the intersection of conservation, utilized science, and finance to guard the continent’s migratory corridors. In Chongón–Posorja, this method interprets into concrete motion: incorporating bird-friendly and bird-safe standards alongside the road’s 69-kilometre route.
On this space, the technical evaluation developed by AFI for the challenge recognized a exceptional richness of birdlife: 382 recorded species, together with 56 migratory species and 30 AFI focal species, primarily long-distance migratory shorebirds. The evaluation additionally recognized 63 species with medium to excessive collision danger, together with the Nice Inexperienced Macaw (Ara ambiguus) and the Gray-cheeked Parakeet (Brotogeris pyrrhopterus).
AFI’s contribution goes past a one-off suggestion. With the assist of Aves y Conservación, BirdLife’s accomplice in Ecuador, the initiative mixed technical evaluation, geospatial evaluation, and biodiversity data to determine potential dangers to birds and information measures from the challenge design stage. This work made it potential to develop suggestions aligned with the mitigation hierarchy and CAF’s Biodiversity Safeguard, starting from the set up of flight diverters — or chook diverters — to systematic collision monitoring and adaptive changes based mostly on scientific proof.
The sensitivity of the realm explains why this method is particularly related. In line with the evaluation performed, the route passes roughly one kilometre from the Parque Lago Nationwide Recreation Space and two strategic Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs): Cordillera Chongón-Colonche and Cerro Blanco; and Mangroves, Estuaries, Wetlands and Forests of the Gulf of Guayaquil. Collectively, these landscapes kind an ecological hall of excessive significance for migratory birds.
This expertise additionally attracts on components from the Bird-Friendly Infrastructure Guide developed by AFI. On this sense, Chongón–Posorja serves as a concrete check case for implementation: a strategy to transfer from principle to follow by making use of science to advance conservation inside a national-scale vitality challenge.
“Transmission traces are important for delivering electrical energy to houses and companies, however they will additionally pose a major problem for migratory birds.”
Tris Allinson, Senior Conservation Scientist, BirdLife Worldwide
At AFI, we promote the applying of the mitigation hierarchy, which relies on a easy precept: earlier than interested by the right way to offset a challenge’s impacts, we should first ask the right way to keep away from or cut back them from the design stage.
In vitality tasks, this implies assessing from the outset whether or not different areas or routes might cut back dangers to birds and biodiversity. Instruments corresponding to AVISTEP, developed by BirdLife Worldwide, assist determine essentially the most delicate areas for birds and information the enlargement of energy grids in a approach that’s extra suitable with nature.
In different phrases, incorporating biodiversity from the starting stage makes it potential to develop extra sustainable infrastructure, whereas decreasing environmental dangers, future prices, and potential conflicts.
From Monitoring to Implementation
Designing a transmission line with bird-friendly standards is barely step one. To know whether or not these measures are working, it’s mandatory to look at what occurs on the bottom as soon as the infrastructure begins to be constructed and operated. Monitoring makes it potential to determine crucial factors, perceive how birds transfer by means of and work together with the panorama, assess whether or not the measures are efficient, and regulate choices based mostly on proof.
In a area the place knowledge on interactions between energy traces and birdlife stay restricted, each well-documented challenge can contribute helpful information to enhance the planning of future infrastructure. That is the place a lot of the worth of the Chongón–Posorja challenge lies: not solely in decreasing dangers alongside a selected line, but in addition in producing classes, instruments, and proof in order that bird-friendly standards may be progressively integrated into future investments in vitality infrastructure.
In truth, the expertise is already producing curiosity in replicating this method on new transmission traces in Ecuador, demonstrating how the combination of science and biodiversity can evolve from a pilot challenge right into a scalable mannequin of sustainable improvement.
“Flight paths can differ by season, species use the panorama in numerous methods, and dangers could also be concentrated in particular sections. That’s why monitoring is important.”
Ana Agreda, Coordinator of the Precedence Websites for Birds Program
Migratory Waterbirds and Conservation
This imaginative and prescient responds to one of many central challenges of our time: creating the infrastructure that Latin America and the Caribbean have to develop, with out sacrificing the ecosystems on which their future relies upon. With a USD 40 billion commitment over the following 5 years centered on sustainable development and local weather motion, together with a simply vitality transition and the conservation of strategic ecosystems, CAF is advancing an agenda by which infrastructure not solely connects territories however also can assist shield them.
Latin America will want extra and higher vitality infrastructure. The query shouldn’t be whether or not energy grids ought to develop, however how they need to accomplish that. Every new transmission line can strengthen provide safety, join territories, and assist financial improvement. However it could possibly additionally accomplish that in a approach that’s extra suitable with biodiversity, incorporating measures from the design stage to cut back dangers to birds and different elements of ecosystems.
This method additionally brings advantages that transcend conservation. The IUCN cites estimates suggesting that, in some elements of the world, between 10% and 23.5% of energy outages in electrical methods could also be related to bird-related incidents. Lowering these interactions, subsequently, not solely helps shield biodiversity; it could possibly additionally strengthen service reliability and the administration of operational dangers.
Chook-friendly vitality infrastructure presents a better approach to answer this problem. It doesn’t search to halt improvement, however to enhance the choices behind it: planning higher, avoiding delicate areas, designing with biodiversity standards, monitoring impacts, and adjusting measures based mostly on proof.
By means of the Lago de Chongón–Posorja Transmission Line, AFI helps present that this method can transfer from suggestion to follow. It additionally exhibits that the vitality way forward for the Americas may be constructed sustainably: increasing entry to dependable vitality whereas defending the pure corridors that maintain life throughout the continent.
