Abstract:
The Wind and Wildlife Landscape Assessment Tool (LAT) is designed as a landscape-level planning tool to identify sensitive wildlife habitat and areas that are likely to have low wildlife risk where wind energy development could be prioritized. Although the siting of individual wind energy projects will require on-the-ground surveys to verify data shown here, our hope is that this tool will provide
... stakeholders with information that facilitates the siting of wind energy in areas with minimal impacts to wildlife, as well as the development of conservation plans, monitoring plans and mitigation strategies.
The LAT uses numerous data layers generated from public sources. These sources are limited by a high degree of variation in their accuracy and in the scales at which they function. This LAT is a general screening tool and may provide some guidance as to the environmental characteristics and important landscape-scale wildlife values of a geographic area. This initial screening can offer early guidance about possible sensitivity of a site within a larger landscape context and could be used by wind developers for preliminary landscape scale assessment. The LAT, however, cannot be relied upon for actual and individual siting decisions. Those decisions must be made on the basis of locally-developed data and analyses, taking into consideration numerous factors, including factors unrelated to wildlife.
[Summary provided by the Nature Conservancy.] 
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