James Tweedley

Electricity production contributes 40% of world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Conversion to renewable energy production is therefore critical for mitigating climate change. Australia’s commitment to meeting emission targets has seen rapid growth in the renewable energy sector. Wind energy met 13.4% of Australia’s total energy demands over the last 12 months, but the rapid increase in wind energy developments will see this proportion increase. In 2023, there were 121 Australian wind farms operating or under construction, but an additional 188 have been proposed. Markedly, there is a projected 12-fold increase over current wind energy generation, with more, much larger turbines, proposed. As the number of wind energy projects increases, so has the scrutiny of their environmental impact. Wind energy, in particular, has a pronounced ecological impact on bird and bat species due to collisions with turbine blades and towers. Understanding the potential impact of the growth of wind farms on threatened wildlife species requires species-specific collision risk data. However, reported turbine strike data is lacking for most Australian species, especially scarce, threatened species, and those whose geographic range does not overlap with existing wind farms. Without actual strike data, conservation management decisions are currently being made on the basis of theoretical predictions. To fully assess and address potential environmental impacts of wind turbine developments We have reviewed the biological traits of bird and bat species, available collision mortality monitoring, and compiled direct activity observations to identify a list of Western Australian species that are potentially at risk of wind turbine collision. We have also identified knowledge gaps that require additional research. This work is building research and industry collaboration towards managing and mitigating the balance between green energy development and the conservation challenges that it represents.

This project focuses on the following needs identified in the Westport Science Strategy:

• “Research to aid prediction of impact of increased turbidity from Westport Project (construction and operation) on seagrass health and hard substrate habitat.”
• “Pressure-response relationships (seagrass and other key benthic species/communities)”
• “Research to determine feasibility of establishing hard substrate/reef on Kwinana Shelf”

Since unvegetated soft-sediment habitats have been identified as key habitat in several Theme workshops, these habitats have been included as key focal habitats, along with hard substrates.

This project has three core components:

1. Surveys of benthic communities in soft-sediment and natural hard habitats.
2. Determination of the pressure-response relationships of key benthic macroalgae and macroinvertebrates to suspended sediment and sedimentation.
3. Small-scale field studies on the feasibility of artificial reefs as a mitigation strategy.

This project is part of the Revitalising Geographe Waterways’ Integrated Ecological Monitoring Study (IEM) which aims to better understand the relationships between water regime, food sources and abundance of benthic macroinvertebrates (> 500 µm), fish and birds utilising the range of habitats (regions) present in the Vasse-Wonnerup.

The benthic macroinvertebrate component is a subset of the larger IEM study and aims to:

1. Determine the characteristics of the benthic macroinvertebrate fauna (i.e. number of species, abundance, diversity and faunal composition), within the six regions of the wetlands at seasonal and annual scales
2. Assess the key environmental drivers (e.g. water quality and depth) that influence invertebrate communities.
3. Investigate the characteristics of the benthic macroinvertebrate fauna at different depths within the most upstream regions of the wetlands (subtidal, intertidal and drying sediments).
4. Help to better understand the potential ecological consequences of changing water regime (water quality and depth) on macroinvertebrate fauna across the different spatial and temporal scales in wetlands.