Wind energy development causes bat fatalities. Despite emphasis on understanding and reducing these impacts, few data are available for the southwest region of the United States and northern Mexico. We monitored bat fatalities for a full year (March 2017–March 2018) at a wind energy facility in south Texas near the United States–Mexico border. We established search plots of 100-m radius at eight randomly selected turbines (of 255) and searched the roads and pads at an additional 92 turbines. We conducted weekly searches from spring through fall and bimonthly during winter. We used GenEst (Generalized Mortality Estimator) to estimate bat fatalities corrected for searcher efficiency, carcass removal, and density-weighted proportion of area searched. We found 205 bats during standardized searches, the majority of which were Brazilian free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis, 76%). The corrected fatality estimates were 16 bats/megawatt/year (95% confidence interval [CI]: 12 – 30 bats/megawatt/year) across all species. Species composition at our site is similar to that of northern Mexico, an area of expanding wind energy development with no published studies.

中文翻译：

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估算德克萨斯州风能发电站的蝙蝠死亡率：超越美国-墨西哥边界的影响

风能的发展导致蝙蝠死亡。尽管强调理解和减少这些影响，但是美国西南地区和墨西哥北部的数据很少。我们在得克萨斯州南部靠近美国和墨西哥边境的风能设施中监测了全年（2017年3月至2018年3月）蝙蝠的死亡情况。我们在八个随机选择的涡轮机（共255个）中建立了半径为100 m的搜索图，并在另外92个涡轮机上搜索了道路和路基。从春季到秋季，我们每周进行一次搜索，冬季则每两个月进行一次搜索。我们使用GenEst（创eralized死亡率预估模仿者）估算蝙蝠的死亡人数，这些死亡人数已针对搜索者的效率、,体去除率和所搜索区域的密度加权比例进行了校正。在标准化搜索过程中，我们发现了205​​只蝙蝠，其中大多数是巴西的无尾蝙蝠（Tadarida brasiliensis，76％）。校正后的死亡率估计为所有物种16蝙蝠/兆瓦/年（95％置信区间[ CI ]：12-30蝙蝠/兆瓦/年）。我们工厂的物种组成与墨西哥北部类似，该地区正在扩大风能开发，尚无已发表的研究。