Brazil faces dilemma: endangered macaw vs. wind farm
By Rafael MARTINS, with Ramon SAHMKOW in Brasilia
Canudos, Brazil (AFP) Could 23, 2023
A wind farm in northeastern Brazil seems like a welcome climate-friendly vitality answer, however it’s inflicting controversy over one other form of environmental fear: the impression on the endangered Lear’s macaw.
Residence to greater than 90 % of Brazil’s booming wind-power trade, the northeast is thought for sturdy, regular winds that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva desires to harness to energy a green-energy revolution.
The area has drawn the curiosity of French renewable vitality firm Voltalia, which broke floor final yr on a 28-turbine, 100-megawatt wind farm in semi-arid Canudos county, within the state of Bahia.
However the undertaking quickly got here below assault when it emerged that the large generators, with their 120-meter (practically 400-foot) diameter blades — a identified risk to birds in flight — had been being in-built a nesting area for the Lear’s macaw, a vibrant blue parrot also referred to as the indigo macaw, or by its scientific identify Anodorhynchus leari.
Named for Nineteenth-century English poet Edward Lear, the birds have dwindled to an estimated inhabitants of not more than 2,000 within the wild, as farming and logging have vastly diminished their habitat.
The wind farm is “very dangerous,” mentioned Marlene Reis, of the Lear’s Macaw Gardens Challenge, a company making an attempt to avoid wasting the species.
“It may significantly improve the chance of extinction,” she advised AFP.
And the harm “may very well be irreversible, particularly for these iconic macaws, who solely dwell and reproduce on this area.”
A federal courtroom halted the ultimate stage of building on the generators in April, revoking Voltalia’s permits.
“It can’t be thought of a low environmental impression” undertaking, given the proximity to an endangered hen species, the courtroom dominated, ordering additional impression research and consultations with native communities.
Voltalia has appealed the choice.
“The potential environmental and social impacts have already been handled exhaustively,” Voltalia’s nation supervisor for Brazil, Nicolas Thouverez, advised AFP.
The impression research required by state authorities have proven the generators “on no account endanger the conservation” of the Lear’s macaw, he mentioned.
“They demonstrated the environmental viability of the undertaking.”
The corporate has proposed lowering dangers by portray the generators to make them extra seen to birds, in addition to becoming the macaws with GPS trackers and putting in expertise that instantly stops the blades turning once they fly over.
– ‘The identify of progress’ –
Brazil is a world chief on inexperienced vitality.
It has the most important proportion of unpolluted electrical energy within the G20 group of countries, at 89 %.
Lula, who took workplace in January, has vowed to increase that additional nonetheless.
Mines and Power Minister Alexandre Silveira mentioned just lately that Lula desires to show Brazil’s impoverished northeast into the “greatest renewable vitality breadbasket on this planet.”
Silveira has introduced plans to put in as much as 30 gigawatts of unpolluted vitality manufacturing capability within the northeast, primarily wind and photo voltaic.
The whole funding may attain 120 billion reais ($24 billion).
However Voltalia presents a case research of the form of opposition initiatives can run into on the bottom.
Along with the outcry over the Lear’s macaw, the corporate faces resistance from small-scale communal farmers and cattle ranchers, round 7,500 of whom dwell within the space across the wind farm.
“The impression will probably be felt throughout the board,” mentioned Adelson Matos, 65, a white-bearded farmer who tends to goats, sheep, cows, chickens and fruit within the close by village of Alto Redondo.
The wind farm is noisy, attracts automobile visitors in any respect hours, and has altered rain and wind patterns with its huge constructions, Matos complained.
“It breaks all concord with the pure habitat,” he advised AFP.
“All within the identify of progress,” he mentioned bitterly.
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