[lutorm]

But it seems that the principal objection to these counts is that birds don't necessarily die on impact but may travel quite far before succumbing to their injuries, so the counts necessarily result in an underestimate of the true effect. Are you saying the area that's surveyed is large enough that this isn't true?

[UniverseHacker]

I’m certain these studies are able to estimate those other deaths and consider factors beyond just carcasses on the ground, because I am personally close to a biologist that works on this, but I don’t know exactly how they do it. The author here seems to be incorrectly extrapolating research statements on static buildings to windmills, when the latter is much more researched.

[vouaobrasil]

That seems like something very far from a certainty. Imagine if you were to cite this in a scientific paper: "a close friend of mine does this but I have no idea how they do it". What about this [1]:

> We show that the use of the ORNIS 1%, the 5% mortality criterion, and potential biological removal criteria are inadequate for providing safe thresholds with respect to the impact of wind turbine collisions on populations.

From a paper entitled "Mortality limits used in wind energy impact assessment underestimate impacts of wind farms on bird populations".

1. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.6360