South Africa’s expanding wind energy industry is providing much needed alleviation from an ongoing energy crisis. Its development, however, does bear environmental repercussions, which most notably include its impact on birds. Collision risks, habitat loss, and barrier effects are amongst the threats, which require effective mitigation efforts. Avian radar systems have vastly enhanced these efforts and one such system was applied in this study to assess the accuracy of the generally more employed visual monitoring efforts, with a focus on Cape Vultures Gyps coprotheres in the Eastern Cape Province. This, to the best of our knowledge, also marks the first study of this nature on the African continent. Paired observations returned substantial spatial disparity between radar and visual Cape Vulture observations. They also revealed strong relationships between altitudinal misjudgement and height of the target, as well as distance of the target from the observer. Cape Vulture flight and foraging behaviour makes it a challenging observer target. The results of this study suggest that radar technology can be effectively employed at sensitive sites for Cape Vulture movement assessments at wind farms.

南非不断发展的风能产业正在缓解持续的能源危机。然而，它的发展确实会带来环境影响，其中最引人注目的是它对鸟类的影响。碰撞风险，栖息地丧失和屏障效应是其中的威胁，需要采取有效的缓解措施。鸟类雷达系统极大地增强了这些工作，本研究中使用了一种这样的系统来评估通常采用的视觉监视工作的准确性，重点是海角秃鹰吉普斯共生在东开普省。据我们所知，这也标志着非洲大陆对这种性质的首次研究。成对的观测结果返回了雷达观测和目击秃鹰观测之间的巨大空间差异。他们还揭示了高度误判与目标高度以及目标与观察者的距离之间的密切关系。Cape Vulture的飞行和觅食行为使其成为具有挑战性的观察者目标。这项研究的结果表明，雷达技术可以在敏感地点有效地用于风电场的秃Cape运动评估。