Authors: Anagnostopoulou, Aspasia; Bourdakis , Eustratios;Kaltsis, Apostolos ;Tsiopelas, Nikolaos;Saravia, Victoria ;Dimalexis, Anastasios;Sidiropoulos, Lavrentis;Bousbouras, Dimitris;Tsiakiris, Rigas;Rousopoulos, Ioannis;

The installation and operation of Wind Power Plants (WPP) has been proven to have negative effects on biodiversity, especially on birdlife. In the present work, we studied the interaction of WPP development in Greece with nine large birds of prey that are particularly vulnerable to collision and displacement due to wind energy infrastructure. Specifically, we examined the spatial overlap of existing and planned WPP with the reproductive distribution of these species and we produced sensitivity maps. Overall, we found that 1027 (37.9%) of the existing wind turbines are located in a distance of less than 5km from known breeding sites, while in the hypothetical scenario of implementing all planned projects, 6070 (36.7%) wind turbines will be located at a distance less than 5km from 62.9% of all the species breeding sites included in this study. The breeding distribution of Gyps fulvus, Gypaetus barbatus and Aquila chrysaetos exhibit the greatest potential overlap with WPP (i.e., 82.9%, 75% and 61.1% respectively). We conclude that the development of wind energy in Greece can be extremely detrimental to the conservation status of the study species, if appropriate spatial planning measures are not applied.