Bennett Adam J, Watson David M, Watson Maggie J
Charles Sturt University, 386 Elizabeth Mitchell Drive, Thurgoona, NSW, 2640, Australia.
Bird Group, The Natural History Museum, Tring, Hertfordshire, HP23 6AP, UK.
Oecologia. 2025 Aug 13;207(9):142. doi: 10.1007/s00442-025-05780-7.
Electrical infrastructure networks are predicted to greatly expand in response to the expected 48% increase in global energy demand by 2040. While assessments of electrical infrastructure are abundant, mixed effects on animal diversity have been reported, warranting further evaluation to determine true effects. We conducted a systematic literature review covering individual, population, and community-level assessments to determine the impacts posed to animal biodiversity by electrical infrastructure and the measures to reduce impacts. Our results show that the literature around electrical infrastructure and animal biodiversity has grown exponentially since the start of the millennium and is biased towards birds and mammals in economically developed countries. We found the majority of reported impacts were negative, occurring primarily through barrier effects (collision) and use of linear features as a resource (electrocution), causing significant population impacts in select species. However, we also found that electrical infrastructure provided positive effects (increased habitat provisioning) to certain taxonomic groups (e.g. corvids, storks), which suggests the potential to encourage conservation efforts using appropriate mitigation on electrical infrastructure. We found the majority of current literature detailed mitigation measures focused on reducing collisions through line (51%) and tower alterations (30%), but often omitted the impacts of EMF, noise, and UV, indicating significant knowledge gaps. On a wider scale, we found that mortality from electrical infrastructure ranked lower than building collisions and predation from feral cats, but remained higher than other anthropogenic energy sources, indicating the potential to cause significant impacts to large-bodied bird species if not addressed.
预计电力基础设施网络将大幅扩张，以应对到2040年全球能源需求预计增长48%的情况。虽然对电力基础设施的评估很多，但已报告了对动物多样性的混合影响，因此有必要进一步评估以确定实际影响。我们进行了一项系统的文献综述，涵盖个体、种群和群落水平的评估，以确定电力基础设施对动物生物多样性造成的影响以及减少影响的措施。我们的结果表明，自千禧年开始以来，围绕电力基础设施和动物生物多样性的文献呈指数增长，并且偏向于经济发达国家的鸟类和哺乳动物。我们发现，报告的大多数影响都是负面的，主要通过屏障效应（碰撞）和将线性特征用作资源（触电）发生，对某些物种的种群产生了重大影响。然而，我们也发现电力基础设施对某些分类群（如鸦科、鹳）产生了积极影响（增加栖息地供应），这表明有可能通过对电力基础设施采取适当的缓解措施来鼓励保护工作。我们发现，当前大多数文献详细介绍的缓解措施侧重于通过线路改造（51%）和杆塔改造（30%）来减少碰撞，但往往忽略了电磁场、噪音和紫外线的影响，这表明存在重大的知识空白。在更广泛的范围内，我们发现电力基础设施造成的死亡率低于建筑物碰撞和野猫捕食，但仍高于其他人为能源造成的死亡率，这表明如果不加以解决，可能会对大型鸟类物种造成重大影响。
