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Rare upland bird species like the curlew – the bird in the Daelnet logo and one of the most distinctive creatures of Britain’s wilder countryside – are being driven from their traditional nesting sites by wind farms, according to research in Scotland.

Other species affected are buzzards, golden plovers and red grouse, say scientists from the Scottish RSPB and Scottish Natural Heritage, who believe that the turbines act as “giant scarecrows” frightening birds and driving them away.

This news will cause anger in the Yorkshire Dales and many other hilly areas of Britain, which are threatened with a massive increase in onshore wind turbines as part of the Government’s determination to make the world’s largest cut in carbon emissions - despite the fact that the UK produces only 2% of the world’s so-called “global gas” production.

The USA and China between them emit almost half of the world total but both refused to enter into binding agreements to reduce those emissions at the recent chaotic climate change conference in Copenhagen.

A planning enquiry is due later this spring over plans to erect five massive turbines the size of Big Ben near Gargrave on the borders of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The local authority, backed by hundreds of protestors, has refused planning permission but many fear the Government will use new planning powers to force the project through.

The Scottish research will come as an embarrassment in Britain to both the Government and conservation bodies.

The English Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has come out strongly in favour of windfarms so long as they are not sited on coastal routes regularly used by migrating birds because foreign research has show that such turbines are major killers of migrating species.

And its sets a conundrum for the environment department Defra, which has a widely quoted public policy devoted to restoring the numbers of farmland birds which have been in decline for decades.

Some officials at Defra believe that a healthy wild bird population is a key indicator to the health of the local environment – yet others are pressing for more and more windfarms. And as we reported on December 14 (See News), the Government has tried to suppress other research which suggested that noise from wind turbines can cause illness inn people living nearby, forcing some of them to move house.