Background/Question/Methods
Wind provides a renewable energy source which can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Although wind energy can help the United States meet its renewable energy development goals, it can have negative impacts to wildlife and their habitats.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for the conservation of its trust resources, which include endangered species and migratory birds, for the continuing benefit of the American people.  Our role in supporting wind energy development is to ensure that it’s done in a way that will avoid and minimize impacts on wildlife.  Therefore we are studying the effects of wind energy development on wildlife and their habitats, and developing ways to avoid, minimize, and mitigate negative effects.  The Service recognizes that instead of attempting to undertake this effort unilaterally, the greatest conservation benefit will come from working with our stakeholders to collaboratively address the issue.
In 2007, the Secretary of the Interior formed a federal advisory committee to provide recommendations on developing effective measures to avoid and minimize impacts to wildlife and their habitats from land-based wind energy facilities.  This committee is comprised of experts in wind energy and wildlife interactions, and includes representatives from wildlife conservation organizations, wind energy industry, tribes, and state and federal governments.  They have spent the past two years developing a set of recommendations.  Once these recommendations are complete, the Service will use them to finalize a set of nation-wide guidelines and begin the process of training Service biologists and our stakeholders to put them into practice.
The Service helps developers plan windpower projects.  Our goal is to work with developers early in the planning process to identify potential issues and jointly develop solutions.  The Service’s Conservation Planning Assistance biologists located in field offices around the country are poised to address wildlife-wind energy interaction issues.  They will continue to work with wind energy developers as they have in the past, but with the benefit of new guidelines that will result in greater conservation benefit, strengthened trust among stakeholders, and incentives for developers to take additional measures to protect wildlife and habitat.
Results/Conclusions

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is developing nation-wide voluntary guidelines that will enable the United States to meet its renewable energy development goals while avoiding and minimizing the effects of wind energy development on wildlife and its habitats.