Wildlife Impacts

What is the impact on animals?

Impacts will occur. They are not yet determined.  An Environmental Assessment will make recommendations to accommodate wildlife.

If serious impacts occur that cannot be avoided, the project will not be approved by the Province.

According to the British Wind Energy Association, wind farming is popular with farmers, because their land around the turbines can continue to be used for growing crops or grazing livestock. They claim that sheep, cows and horses are not disturbed by wind turbines.

Like the health issues, there is a lot of controversy about wildlife impacts. Here again we must be cautious. We understand that many activities that do cause serious damage to the environment still pass Environmental Assessments and proceed, so we aren’t trying to sweep this important issue under the carpet by saying that we will conduct a study.

Projects that pass environmental assessments even though their impacts on the environment are significant and greater than a wind farm include:

• the installation of nuclear and coal fired power plants,
• the new four lane highway replacing highway 69,
• flooding of thousands of square kilometers of lands in the north for hydro electric power
• the tars sands,
• high voltage transmission lines.

Yes, all of these activities have passed Environmental Assessments.