STRIX concluded successfully another bird monitoring season at Gabal-El Zeyt wind farm in Egypt.
During the past three months, a team of international and local ornithologists has been monitoring soaring birds as part of the “Radar Assisted Turbine Shutdown on Demand and bird migration monitoring” program coordinated by STRIX since 2018.
This 200 MW wind farm is located in the western coast of the Gulf of Suez, a part of the Red Sea/ Rift Valley flyway, where hundreds of thousands of soaring birds are funneled through this stretch of coast on both spring and autumn migration periods.
The Spring campaign was successfully implemented, with more than 30 species of soaring birds being detected, 6 of which have the globally threatened status of the IUCN Red List.
Shutdown operations, namely the response time, performed generally well and the total equivalent shutdown period for the whole Spring Season was residual.
The successful implementation of temporary turbine shutdown to mitigate bird mortality due to collision at the Gabal el Zayt Wind Farm is a project of unparalleled importance in the context of the conflict between wind energy and birds, due to the size and extension of the wind farm but particularly to the number of birds that migrate through the area.