In Minnesota’s south, is it wind energy versus wildlife habitat?

St. Paul — As the state of Minnesota and others push for renewable energy in the form of wind and solar, wildlife advocates – including conservation groups and state agencies – are facing a two-fold challenge: massive wind-project easements that preclude possible conservation acquisition or easements, along with potential wind projects’ effects on local wildlife.

Consider: According to the DNR, there currently are 70 “large wind energy conversion system” projects in Minnesota, nearly all of them in the southwestern portion of the state.

Further, some 2,732 wind turbines exist in the DNR’s southern region, including more than 600 in Lincoln County alone. About 690,000 private-land acres are now enrolled in wind easements.

And, as Dave Trauba, the DNR’s interim Wildlife Section manager told members of the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council on Tuesday morning, another 14 LWECS projects are on tap, which may represent another 700,000 acres of wind project easements in southwestern and western Minnesota – bringing the wind easement acreage total to approximately 1.4 million acres, more than the total acreage of the state’s wildlife management area system.

Nearly all of the upcoming wind-project development is located within a small portion of the state, eventually including up to 16 counties but concentrated in Lincoln, Lyon, and Murray counties, per the DNR.

“That makes the wildlife professional in me sit up straight,” said Trauba, who, prior to his current position, served nine years as the southern region manager and, before that, 24 years as manager of the Lac qui Parle WMA in far western Minnesota.

While wind-project easements are often focused within the “ag matrix,” Trauba said, those broad easements also include potential land acquisition options for the benefit of wildlife; setback requirements further tie the hands of the DNR, federal agencies, and conservation groups whose aim is to improve wildlife health.

In fact, Trauba said regarding some conservation partners’ wildlife habitat activities, “If they see a wind easement, they say, we’re moving on.”

Wind projects in southern Minnesota aren’t new. The first modern-era project appeared some 30 years ago, when, Trauba told LSOHC members, rules and regulations regarding such projects were largely nonexistent.

Since then, the rate at which projects have hit the ground has accelerated. Further, larger and taller wind turbines has created a broader turbine footprint within project areas.

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It wasn’t until in recent years that the scale of wind-project easements began to be more widely noted by conservation groups, which more frequently encountered project-killing wind easements during the course of their own work.

“This was an issue no one was aware of until (in recent years) when our partners came to us and said, Dave, we’re running up against wind easements, and our own (DNR) acquisition staff (said the same), and I started asking myself, how many acres of wind easements do we have? That’s what started the whole thing,” Trauba said, adding that he’s attempted to digest all related data he’s encountered in recent years.

Lincoln County, located due west of Marshall and bordering South Dakota in southwestern Minnesota, is cited by Trauba as an example of how quickly wind-project easements have consumed the landscape. He calls the county his “second-favorite” (first is Big Stone County) in terms of the amount of wildlife habitat in southern region counties. Lincoln’s county seat is Ivanhoe, and it includes the towns of Hendricks, Tyler, and Lake Benton.

The county, Trauba said, has 67 WMAs, 30 waterfowl production areas, and about 30,000 acres in the federal Conservation Reserve Program. He said “millions of dollars” have been invested in conservation in the county, by agencies and organizations.

Currently, Trauba told the council, about 50% of the county’s acreage is “bound by (wind easements).” Further, two projects are in the planning phase, which could mean another 20% in such easements.

So, he said, “70% of the county is unavailable for land conservation,” including such programs as Re-invest in Minnesota, the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, DNR and partner acquisition, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acquisition.

“I just wonder, where do we go with conservation in Lincoln County,” Trauba said. “There’s room, but it’s awfully crowded.”

While Lincoln County might be the poster child for expansive wind-power development, he said similar development pressure is expected to rapidly move into neighboring Lyon and Murray counties.

Wildlife effects

While research is somewhat limited (because few before-and-after studies are available) regarding what wind project development and subsequently installed turbines might mean for wildlife on the landscape, Trauba said a recent study from North Dakota indicated a 53% “displacement of grassland-nesting birds within 984 feet (of) a turbine.”

He said the USFWS is now developing a tool that looks at such bird displacement near wind projects when determining where to focus grassland conservation efforts and, “as a state, we should do the same,” Trauba said.

In Minnesota, Trauba told council members, CRP tracts without turbines in the immediate vicinity had four times greater bird densities.

“My point is, you can put grass on the landscape, but if they’re in the wind-energy field, the research would tell us you’re not going to get the grassland breeding bird density in areas you would in areas without turbines,” Trauba said.

Other wildlife considerations, he said, include demographics due to habitat fragmentation, abandonment (heron rookeries, for example), and other population-level effects.

In addition to nongame bird species, the southern region is home to abundant pheasants, turkeys, and waterfowl that nest there. Farther north, in Clay County especially, there’s concern for prairie chickens.

The degree of bird and bat mortality caused by spinning turbines presents yet another concern – and another aspect of wind-power generation that’s being studied.

According to Trauba’s presentation, the DNR expects to convene an interdisciplinary team to “work cooperatively with staff subject-matter experts from the (state) Department of Commerce and the Public Utilities Commission to explore additional strategies regarding wind development and conservation.”

Trauba said new technology regarding turbines might eventually be available to, to an extent, mitigate the effects of turbines on wildlife. Layered maps showing project and turbine locations, too, would prove helpful in charting a map for conservation efforts, he added.

Meanwhile, David Hartwell, chair of the LSOHC, called the information provided by Trauba “sobering.”

Dudley Edmundson, a member of the council from Duluth, asked if what is ahead might constitute a “race” between conservation and wind easements.

“I don’t want to characterize it as a race,” Trauba said.

“Everyone is working together in good faith.”

But, he added, “Our ability to put conservation on the ground in certain areas of southwestern Minnesota is going to be much more difficult moving forward into the future. We’re not stepping back on doing good conservation work in Region 4, but we do have challenges.”