Building Mitigation Best Practices

When developing wind energy projects, careful siting and best operational practices are used to avoid and minimize negative impacts to wildlife and wildlife habitat. When avoidance and minimization do not satisfactorily reduce negative impacts, the environmental and regulatory communities prescribe compensatory mitigation to reduce or offset unavoidable harm to wildlife.

Compensatory mitigation is controlled by state and federal laws and regulations that are site-specific. Compared to other environmental quality issues such as air pollution and wetlands preservation, regulatory processes for mitigating wind-wildlife impacts is in its infancy. AWWI is committed to developing a toolbox of approaches and best practices for compensatory mitigation that are science-based, cost-effective, and field-tested.

As a baseline for future work, AWWI commissioned a comprehensive study by Solano Partners on current compensatory mitigation practices and legal requirements, released in June 2010. You can download the full report, Enabling Progress: Compensatory Mitigation Scenarios for Wind Energy Projects in the U.S.