Almost 1,400 birds will die each year if a controversial offshore wind farm gets the go-ahead, the UK’s leading bird-protection charity has claimed. Anne McCall, director of the RSPB in Scotland, has responded after the charity was criticised by business groups for trying to halt the wind project. As reported in The Times yesterday, 29 companies have come together to call on the RSPB to stop its legal action against the 64-turbine development due to be sited off the east coast of Scotland. The business groups warned that the charity’s efforts to halt the development threatened the livelihoods of hundreds of families and the £2 billion investment due to be spent on the Neart na Gaoithe offshore wind farm. Writing in The Times today, Ms McCall warns that the number of sea birds likely to be killed by the turbines would damage the bird colonies on Bass Rock. She writes: “According to Scottish ministers’ own estimates, the four projects would kill 1,169 gannets and 1,251 puffins every year, resulting in 21 per cent fewer gannets on the Bass Rock and 25 per cent fewer puffins on other ‘protected’ islands of the Forth.” Mainstream Renewable Power, the wind farm’s developer, claimed that the project would bring £610 million in revenue into the regional economy.
Times 17th Aug 2017 read more »
RSPB Scotland’s decision to challenge the Scottish ministers’ approval of four wind farms in the Firth of Forth aims to strengthen democratic accountability and clearly fulfils our charitable objects. Suggestions that our actions are undemocratic are wide of the mark. Charities like us exist to deliver public benefit, such as protecting wildlife, and have a duty to challenge public bodies’ decisions which threaten to make those charitable objects significantly more difficult to achieve.
Times 17th Aug 2017 read more »
A group of about 30 Scottish supply-chain companies have come together in support of a £2 billion offshore wind farm ready to be built next year off the east coast of Scotland. The organisations supportive of the Neart na Gaoithe (NnG) project have written an open letter to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) Scotland calling on it to abandon further court action aimed at delaying the project. The firms say they are behind many of the 600 jobs the wind farm will create. It is expected to generate enough green energy to power all the homes in a city the size of Edinburgh. In their view, the Scottish renewables supply chain “can ill afford further delays in the project and appeals to the membership organisation to accept the recent decision of the Scottish courts”, last month dismissing the RSPB’s request for permission to appeal approval of the project. It was originally consented by Scottish ministers in 2014.
Scotsman 16th Aug 2017 read more »
