Confirmation that eagle fatalities can be reduced by automated curtailment of wind turbines

1. Automated curtailment is potentially a powerful technique to reduce collision mortality of wildlife with wind turbines. Previously, we used a before-after-control-impact framework to demonstrate that eagle fatalities declined after automated curtailment was implemented with the IdentiFlight system at a wind power facility in Wyoming, USA. We received substantial interest and feedback regarding our study and, here, we implement several analytical suggestions and include more recent data that strengthen the inference we draw from our results.
2. The five main analytical suggestions we received were to 1) exclude from analysis data that were collected during the period when automated curtailment was only partially implemented; 2) only analyze data from a single make and model of turbine; 3) evaluate changes in the rate of fatality, instead of the yearly numbers of fatalities that result from fluctuations around that rate; 4) calculate the standard measure determining effects of a treatm...