A wind farm project near a nature reserve home to elephants in South Africa is causing concern among conservationists, who fear the turbines could harm the elephants.
On one side, the Addo elephant national park, home to some 600 elephants, in the south of the country. On the other, a project to build 200 wind turbines in a country in the midst of an energy crisis, desperately looking for ways to generate more electricity.
“It’s disastrous,” William Fowlds, a wildlife veterinarian who runs a lodge in the area, told AFP. He fears that wind turbines will destroy “the wild side of safaris”.
“We are not against wind turbines, but if you locate them in an area of high environmental and ecotourism value, you damage this environment and the lives of those who live there,” he criticizes.
In the country plagued by regular power cuts, solar and wind, still very under-exploited, represent serious alternatives. The first industrial power on the continent, which still draws 80% of its electricity from coal, is unable to produce enough, in particular because of dilapidated and poorly maintained power stations.
The builders of the wind farms, including France’s EDF, have been given the green light by the environment ministry, which last year rejected a call to block everything. The ministry assured that an environmental impact study has been carried out.
Not enough to convince the critics of the project, who said this week to consider new legal actions.
One of the fears is that infrasonic communication between large terrestrial mammals could be seriously disrupted.
“There is a real risk that this will have an impact on their mode of communication” and their level of “stress”, warns AFP Angela Stoeger-Horwath, specialist in animal behavior at the University of Vienna. “Wind turbines make a lot of noise.”
Elephants could become “aggressive”, says Jeni Smithies, nature guide and wildlife photographer. Not to mention the degradation of the landscape, she says.
EDF already operates a wind farm about ten km from the park. It “has been operational since 2015 and no complaint, problem or grievance has been raised”, assured the group to AFP, claiming to watch over the site’s biodiversity.