This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Bat populations across the United States face numerous threats, and one of the biggest may be the number of collisions with wind turbines. According to the most comprehensive study of the problem to date, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, more than 18 million bats may have died at wind energy facilities between 1981 and 2024.
Many bats killed at wind farms collide with turbine blades, but it is not clear why this happens. They could be attracted by the noise, mistake the structures for trees, struggle to detect the blades or be drawn to them for other reasons. While previous research has tried to quantify these losses, earlier studies did not show how individual bat species were affected across the country.
In this research, a team led by Charles J. Geological Survey combined 499 postconstruction monitoring (PCM) reports from 277 wind facilities surveyed between 1996 and 2024. Wind farm operators compiled these assessments to estimate how many bats were killed near turbines.
But these records alone did not reveal the full picture because search methods were different between wind farms, and researchers inevitably missed some fallen carcasses. For example, scavenging animals might quickly remove them, or tall grasses could hide the dead bats. So the study authors developed a statistical approach that accounted for missing data and estimated how many bats of each species may have been killed across the country, including at wind farms that had not been monitored.
The findings make for grim reading. In total, the team estimates that 18.7 million bats from 10 species were killed by wind turbines across the contiguous United States between 1981 and 2024. The most affected species were hoary bats with 6.7 million deaths, eastern red bats with 5.8 million and silver-haired bats with 3.4 million.
But there was even more bad news. While the problem has existed for decades, it has escalated sharply in recent years. The estimated number of bat fatalities has risen as wind energy has expanded, exceeding 1.5 million deaths annually from 2021 onward.
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