Land under and around solar arrays can be planted with bird-friendly and pollinator-friendly native plants: a benefit to agriculture, clean energy, bees and birds.

Audubon Vermont works with renewable energy partners and pollinator advocates to create a Pollinator and Bird Friendly Solar program for properly sited solar arrays. A fundamental shift in energy sources is underway and accelerating across Vermont: electricity produced by solar power is becoming more affordable and common place. This shift to clean and renewable energy is critical for addressing the biggest threat to Vermont birds: climate change. While solar installations on grasslands reduce available bird habitat, if sited properly and landscaped with birds and pollinators in mind, solar facilities can also maintain some key elements of habitat and food for many bird species.

Many solar arrays have been located in landscapes known to support climate threatened birds like the Bobolink, Golden-winged Warbler, and American Woodcock.  All energy development has some impact on habitats and wildlife, but the combined impacts of fossil fuel energy extraction, processing and emissions far exceed the impacts on birds from renewable sources of energy. In the big picture, the threat of climate change poses a greater risk to entire species than renewable energy installations generally pose to individual birds. However, it’s crucial to reduce these projects’ impacts on wildlife as much as possible by 1) avoiding impacts to grassland and shrubland birds and pollinators by siting on land that is already developed; 2) if avoidance is not possible, minimizing impacts when siting; and 3) if minimizing and avoidance are not possible, mitigating the loss of habitat.

Properly sited solar arrays can be designed to have benefits for birds and pollinators. In the short term, many birds will benefit from improved habitat on the ground, and in the long-term they will benefit from the shift away from carbon-dependent energy that contributes to climate change.  Promoting solar arrays that also improve habitat can bring a powerful constituency - birders - to be advocates for well-sited solar projects and Vermont’s renewable energy goals.

The goals of this effort are threefold. 

• First, we want to reduce the effects of climate change on Vermont birds by increasing the amount of properly sited renewable energy being used in Vermont.
• Second, we want to minimize or mitigate the habitat impacts of properly sited solar projects and promote the wide-spread use of bird and pollinator friendly landscaping of approved projects.
• Third, we want Audubon members and bird lovers to become vocal advocates for well-sited solar energy projects.   

Properly sited solar sites can have multiple benefits for birds and other wildlife when they are landscaped with native plants that support pollinators and buffering lands are managed in ways that maintain important breeding and foraging habitat features for birds. Using native plants on large plots of land instead of using gravel or turfgrass or regular mowing has numerous benefits:

• Eliminates costly mowing after the first four years of the project’s 20-25 year lifetime
• Reduces mowing to no more than once a year decreases the amount of fossil fuels used at the site. improving the strength of topsoil and channels storm water runoff from the site and adjacent agricultural fields down into the aquifer
• Increases demand for native seeds and plants can support local nursery businesses
• Reduces application of insecticides

Downloadable Resources

Vermont Pollinator Solar Scorecard Audubon Vermont Native Plant List for Solar Screens and Buffers Vermont Bird and Plant Friendly Perrenial List