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  • Review Article
  • Published:

Impacts of onshore wind energy production on biodiversity

Nature Reviews Biodiversity volume 1, pages 567–580 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Wind is increasingly used as a renewable source of energy worldwide. However, harvesting wind energy can have negative consequences for biodiversity. In this Review, we summarize the growth of onshore wind power, its impacts on species and ecosystems, and how those impacts are assessed and mitigated. Across the construction, operation and decommissioning stages, wind facilities are associated with wildlife fatality and behavioural change as well as alteration, loss and fragmentation of terrestrial and aerial habitat. These negative consequences can be mitigated by avoiding construction of wind turbines at sensitive sites, detecting and deterring wildlife, curtailing turbines to reduce fatalities, and replacing lost habitats. Uncertainty about wildlife populations and their demographic parameters, the rate and extent of build-out of onshore wind energy, and best practices for mitigation, as well as variability in regulatory requirements by country or region, all contribute to the difficulty of predicting the consequences of this technology for biodiversity. Scenario-based modelling that incorporates population- and community-level consequences to biodiversity from varying degrees of wind energy development — including the cumulative effects of multiple facilities — is key to addressing this uncertainty.

Key points

  • Wind energy is a growing source of electrical power, but it can have negative effects on biodiversity.

  • Asia has the most wind energy, followed by Europe and then the USA; the rest of the world supports <10% of installed capacity of wind energy.

  • Biodiversity impacts from wind energy can occur at all stages of a wind facility’s life cycle — including planning, construction, operation and decommissioning.

  • Although fatalities are perhaps the best-known impact from wind turbines, turbines can also alter the behaviour of wildlife and cause loss, alteration and fragmentation of habitat.

  • Mitigation of these impacts can include strategically placing turbines to avoid negative interactions (avoidance), encouraging wildlife to steer clear of turbines (deterrence) and replacing animals or habitats lost to turbines (compensation).

  • Despite many uncertainties regarding wind energy’s impacts, the available evidence can inform scenario-based modelling to assess both the consequences of this energy source for biodiversity and how its implementation compares to potential impacts from climate change.

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Fig. 1: Onshore wind energy globally.
Fig. 2: Wind energy impacts on biodiversity.
Fig. 3: The mitigation hierarchy as implemented to address impacts of wind energy on biodiversity.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Hale for thoughtful feedback. Any use of trade, firm or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. US Geological Survey, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, Boise, ID, USA

    Todd E. Katzner

  2. Appalachian Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Frostburg, MD, USA

    David M. Nelson

  3. BIOPOLIS Program in Genomics, Biodiversity and Land Planning, CIBIO, Vairão, Portugal

    Ana Teresa Marques

  4. CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, InBIO Laboratório Associado/BIOPOLIS, Campus de Vairão, Universidade do Porto, Vairão, Portugal

    Ana Teresa Marques

  5. CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, InBIO Laboratório Associado, Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Ana Teresa Marques

  6. Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, Germany

    Christian C. Voigt

  7. Institute of Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Christian C. Voigt

  8. Grupo de Investigaciones en Biología de la Conservación, INIBIOMA Universidad Nacional del Comahue — CONICET, Bariloche, Argentina

    Sergio A. Lambertucci & Natalia Rebolo

  9. Department of Migration, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Radolfzell, Germany

    Sergio A. Lambertucci

  10. Laboratório de Ciência Aplicada à Conservação da Biodiversidade, Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil

    Enrico Bernard

  11. Departamento de Ecologia e Conservação, Instituto de Ciências Naturais, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Lavras, Brazil

    Enrico Bernard

  12. US Geological Survey, Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, Bozeman, MT, USA

    Robert Diehl

  13. FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Megan Murgatroyd

  14. HawkWatch International, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Megan Murgatroyd

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T.E.K. organized the writing effort, all authors were responsible for writing at least one section of the manuscript, and all authors contributed to revisions of the final document.

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The authors declare the following competing interests: T.E.K., R.H.D., M.M. and D.M.N. have research agreements funded by one or several partners including in the renewable energy industry, at the US Department of Energy, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Geological Survey, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute (REWI), and D.M.N. is a science advisor for REWI.

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Katzner, T.E., Nelson, D.M., Marques, A.T. et al. Impacts of onshore wind energy production on biodiversity. Nat. Rev. Biodivers. 1, 567–580 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-025-00078-1

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