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Assessment and mitigation of impacts of power lines and guyed meteorological masts on birds - guidance

Type of publication

Guidelines

Author

Scottish Natural Heritage

Year

2016

Language

English

Publicly available

Yes

Organisation

Scottish Natural Heritage

Organisation type

Government

Country of experiment

Description

This guidance document provides advice on how to assess the potential impacts on birds of proposed overhead power lines. It includes advice on mitigating risk of collisions both with power lines and with guyed meteorological masts. The target audience for this document includes developers and their ecological consultants, NatureScot staff and those within the consenting authorities.

This guidance focuses on high-voltage transmission lines which normally transmit electricity over large distances between load centres; e.g. for Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission these are defined as lines carrying 1500V and above. They usually require an assessment for consent under section 37 of the Electricity Act and therefore require significant survey work to inform Environmental Impact Assessments. However, low-voltage distribution power lines (smaller structures carrying power to domestic end-users) can also have significant impacts on birds and much of the text may also be relevant to these, especially with regard to mitigation. Meteorological masts are also considered, as their supporting guy wires can present a collision risk.

Target species

Multi-species

Key words
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