Not only do many bats die at wind turbines, the turbines also displace some species from their habitats over large areas. When the turbines are in operation at relatively high wind speeds, the activity of bat species that hunt in structurally dense habitats such as forests drops by almost 80% within a radius of 80 to 450 meters around the turbine.

This is the result of a scientific investigation led by scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and the Philipps-Universität Marburg, which is published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation. The team suggests that one of the causes of this avoidance behavior is the noise emission of the turbine rotors, which increases with increasing wind speed.