Turbines kill up to 60 birds a year each: critics.

(From Canberra Times)

Wind farms are killing thousands of birds and bats every year, yearly counts being as high as 60 birds a turbine, an international study claims.

And British environmentalist Professor David Bellamy, who is supporting a fight to stop a wind farm being built on Victoria's South Gippsland coastline, has called for the Federal Government to do more to support solar energy.

''You're living in the sunburnt country, so why don't you focus on solar energy?'' he asked an audience of more than 1000 people in the South Gippsland coastal town of Foster.

Executive director of the Australian Business Council for Sustainable Energy Ric Brazzale said he was ''extremely disappointed'' by Professor Bellamy's opposition to wind farms. He said bird deaths from wind turbines were ''a myth'' and only a few instances had been reported in Australia.

''We have not seem it happen, and when it does happen the figures are minuscule,'' he said.

But a report by Spanish conservation agency Iberica says studies show wind turbines at Navarra, on the French border, killed 7150 birds and bats in one year.