Dear John,
As utility-scale solar energy rapidly develops across North America, large swaths of land that are valuable to wildlife may become lost or inaccessible.
Large mammals like mule deer, elk, bears, mountain lions, and pronghorns can’t use land developed for solar projects and struggle to pass through roads and fencing around their facilities. However, wildlife interactions with solar development have not been widely studied, so we have insufficient information to consider wildlife needs in and around solar projects.
To fill these information gaps, we are conducting one of the largest-scale studies of how solar development affects wildlife to date. Our study is comprehensive across many species with an emphasis on ungulates and carnivores but includes other important species like prairie dogs, rabbits, and raptors. We are monitoring select wildlife's presence, relative abundance, habitat needs, and movements before, during, and after solar development over the course of four years.
Ultimately, we aim to create tools and strategies to help developers, government agencies, and wildlife managers identify and resolve wildlife conflicts in their solar projects. The findings will benefit our study areas and could make a difference for hundreds of future projects.
For the wild,
