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Wind power generation has grown exponentially over the past 20 years to meet international goals of increasing the share of renewables in energy production. Yet, this process has too often been conducted at the cost of airborne biodiversity such as birds and bats. The latter are severely threatened due to deaths by collision at wind turbine. The UNEP/EUROBATS agreement that came into force in 1994 is now ratified by 37 countries; since 2008, it recommends to site wind turbines at least 200 m away from woody edges to decrease bat fatality risks. However, 14 years later we still do not know to what extent this international recommendation has been applied in Europe. We assessed siting distances between woody edges and wind turbines for the largest wind energy producers among the UNEP/EUROBATS parties: the UK, Germany, and France. We show that 61%, 78%, and 56%, respectively, of the installed wind turbines did not comply with UNEP/EUROBATS guidelines, without improvement over time. We identified probable causes of these findings and provided key policy recommendations to achieve compliance to UNEP/EUROBATS guidelines such as better: (i) inclusion in regulatory texts, (ii) notification of the environmental authorities, and (iii) strategic, well‐informed, forward planning of areas suitable for wind turbine development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists have warned decision‐makers about the severe consequences of the global environmental crisis since the 1970s. Yet ecological degradation continues and little has been done to address climate change. We investigated early‐career conservation researchers' (ECR) perspectives on, and prioritization of, actions furthering sustainability. We conducted a survey (n = 67) and an interactive workshop (n = 35) for ECR attendees of the 5th European Congress of Conservation Biology (2018). Building on these data and discussions, we identified ongoing and forthcoming advances in conservation science. These include increased transdisciplinarity, science communication, advocacy in conservation, and adoption of a transformation‐oriented social–ecological systems approach to research. The respondents and participants had diverse perspectives on how to achieve sustainability. Reformist actions were emphasized as paving the way for more radical changes in the economic system and societal values linked to the environment and inequality. Our findings suggest that achieving sustainability requires a strategy that (1) incorporates the multiplicity of people's views, (2) places a greater value on nature, and (3) encourages systemic transformation across political, social, educational, and economic realms on multiple levels. We introduce a framework for ECRs to inspire their research and practice within conservation science to achieve real change in protecting biological diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 shutdown has caused a quasi-experimental situation for ecologists in Spring 2020, providing an unprecedented release in acoustic space for avian soundscapes due to the lowest technophony levels experienced for decades. We conducted large-scale passive acoustic monitoring in 68 forest stands during and after the shutdown to compare their acoustic diversity under different management regimes. We designed a before-after sampling scheme of 18 paired stands to evaluate the short-term effect of shutdown on diel and nocturnal acoustic diversity of forest soundscapes. We assessed whether old-growth preserves hosted higher acoustic diversity and vocal activity of flagship specialist birds than production stands during the shutdown, and whether the effect of management was mediated by landscape fragmentation and distance to roads. We derived acoustic richness and vocal activity of flagship specialist birds by systematically performing 15-min long aural listening to identify species vocalizations from all recorded stands. The end of the COVID-19 shutdown led to a rapid decrease in diel and nocturnal biophony and acoustic diversity. During the shutdown, we found significantly higher biophony and acoustic diversity in old-growth preserves than in production stands. Bird acoustic richness and vocalizations of the two most frequent flagship specialists, Dendrocoptes medius and Phylloscopus sibilatrix, were also both higher in old-growth stands. Interestingly, this positive effect of old-growth stands on forest soundscapes suggested that they could potentially attenuate traffic noise, because the distance to roads decreased acoustic diversity and biophony only outside old-growth preserves. Similarly, flagship bird richness increased with old-growth cover in the surrounding landscape while edge density had a negative effect on both acoustic diversity and flagship birds. We suggest that enhancing the old-growth preserve network implemented across French public forests would provide a connected frame of acoustic sanctuaries mitigating the ever-increasing effect of technophony on the acoustic diversity of temperate forest soundscapes., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

With the ever-increasing dependency on electric power, electrical grid networks are expanding worldwide. Bats exhibit a wide diversity of foraging and flight behaviours, and their sensitivity to anthropogenic stressors suggests this group is very likely to be affected by power lines in a myriad of ways. Yet the effects of power lines on bats remains unknown. Here we assessed the responses of insectivorous bats to very high voltage power lines (VHVPL; greater than 220 kV). We implemented a paired sampling design and monitored bats acoustically at 25 pairs, one pair consisting of one forest edge near to VHVPL matched with one control forest edge. Relative humidity mediates the effects of power lines on bats: we detected bat attraction to VHVPL at high relative humidity levels and avoidance of VHVPL by bats at low relative humidity levels. We argue that the former could be explained by insect attraction to the light emitted by VHVPL owing to corona discharges while the latter may be owing to the physical presence of pylons/cables at foraging height and/or because of electromagnetic fields. Our work highlights the response of bats to power lines at foraging habitats, providing new insight into the interactions between power lines and biodiversity.

Wind turbine development is growing exponentially and faster than other sources of renewable energy worldwide. While multi-turbine facilities have small physical footprint, they are not free from negative impacts on wildlife. This is particularly true for bats, whose population viability can be threatened by wind turbines through mortality events due to collisions. Wind turbine curtailment (hereafter referred to as "blanket curtailment") in non-winter periods at low wind speeds and mild temperatures (i.e. when bats are active and wind energy production is low) can reduce fatalities, but show variable and incomplete effectiveness because other factors affect fatality risks including landscape features, rain, turbine functioning, and seasonality. The combined effects of these drivers, and their potential as criteria in algorithm-based curtailment, have so far received little attention. We compiled bat acoustic data recorded over four years at 34 wind turbine nacelles in France from post-construction regulatory studies, including 8619 entire nights (251 ± 58 nights per wind turbine on average). We modelled nightly bat activity in relation to its multiple drivers for three bat guilds, and assessed whether curtailment based on algorithm would be more efficient to limit bat exposure than blanket curtailment based on various combinations of unique wind speed and temperature thresholds. We found that landscape features, weather conditions, seasonality, and turbine functioning determine bat activity at nacelles. Algorithm-based curtailment is more efficient than blanket curtailment, and has the potential to drastically reduce bat exposure while sustaining the same energy production. Compared to blanket curtailment, the algorithm curtailment reduces average exposure by 20 to 29 % and 7 to 12 % for the high-risk guilds of long- and mid-range echolocators, and by 24 to 31 % for the low-risk guild of short-range echolocators. These findings call for the use of algorithm curtailment as both power production and biodiversity benefits will be higher in most situations., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: France Energie Eolienne (FEE) is an association of >300 members, professionals of the wind energy sector in France, who have built >90 % of the turbines installed on the French territory and operate >85 % of them. The scientific question was defined with FEE whose members provided the data. FEE had no role in data preparation and analysis, interpretation and discussion of the results, and decision to publish. The Office Français de la Biodiversité (OFB) is a public institution dedicated to the protection and restoration of biodiversity in metropolitan and overseas France, under the authority of the French Ministry of Ecological Transition and Agriculture and Food. OFB and FEE proofread an early version of the manuscript and this proofreading did not influence the interpretations, discussions and conclusions of the study. Corrections made to the first draft following these proofreadings can be found at doi:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6818161. Authors take complete responsibility for the accuracy of their analysis and their interpretations and discussions. None of the authors was employed by any of the funders prior to, or at the time of the submission of the article. We declare having no other competing interest., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)