Abstract
The intended developments of offshore wind energy in the Dutch North Sea up to 2030 may lead to cumulative effects on seabird and/or migratory bird species due to collisions with rotor blades, habitat loss or barrier effects. The Dutch Framework for Assessing Ecological and Cumulative Effects (KEC) aims to predict and evaluate the cumulative effects of all existing and planned Dutch and foreign wind farms. Within the KEC, the study area comprises the Southern and Central North Sea. In this report it presents the 5th iteration of this KEC analysis on the effects of collision mortality, in which they update the data (chapter 4), analysis (including models; chapter 3) and the ensuing results of the predictions regarding the collisions of birds and testing of these results to ministry-defined norms (chapter 5).
The current analysis is shaped around three parts: 1) Estimating collision mortality per wind farm for two types of species groups: migrant birds (8 species) traversing the Southern and Central North Sea, and local seabirds using the area throughout significant parts of the year (8 species), 2) calculating the cumulative impact per wind farm scenario (different combinations of wind farms) and 3) the population-level analysis of the impact of the predicted mortality due to collisions. For the national scenarios, the predicted impact is then tested against Acceptable Levels of Impact (ALIs; mortality norms) defined by the Dutch ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Nature (LVVN) (chapter 2).