No one counts how many migrating animals renewable energy harms, so a treaty now makes builders plan for it before construction

Whether renewable energy hurts migrating animals has no official count

No number exists anywhere in the 5 documents checked for this article for how many migrating animals, birds, bats or marine mammals among them, a wind or solar project has actually killed or displaced. What exists instead is process, run by a wildlife treaty rather than an energy agency. The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, a United Nations treaty that protects animals crossing national borders, runs a standing task force on renewable energy and migratory species. That task force works against an energy backdrop its own report to the Convention states plainly. The International Energy Agency projects renewable power, especially wind, solar and biomass, will triple by 2035.

The task force writing the rules on renewable energy and migratory species

By September 2025, the Convention own count put 20 member countries on that Energy Task Force, alongside 3 international development agencies, 7 secretariats of other environmental treaties and 14 further international organizations. Another 27 organizations sit in as observers, not full members. Its practical tools include AVISTEP, a bird sensitivity mapping tool launched in 2022 by BirdLife International, a bird conservation group, and now available in 8 countries, including Egypt, Kenya and Vietnam, so a developer can check migration routes before choosing a site. In 2024 the task force competitive Small Grant Fund made its first award, to Bat Conservation International, to study how wind energy affects migratory bats, the closest thing to a body count that any of the 5 sources funds.

Scientists want after construction monitoring data made public

The Convention own Scientific Council pushed back on part of the draft renewable energy text before the March 2026 meeting, according to its own comments on that document. The council flagged that after construction monitoring data, the records showing whether birds, bats or marine mammals actually collide with turbines or avoid a site once it is built, is not always public, because the companies that build wind and solar projects usually own it themselves. The council proposed wording that would encourage the data to be made public instead, and the meeting adopted it. IUCN, an international conservation organization, points to its own Ecowende project in the North Sea, an offshore wind project built with biodiversity safeguards designed in from the start rather than added afterward, as the kind of example that approach is meant to produce.

What the March 2026 meeting decided, and why it counts as law

At its 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties, held in Campo Grande, Brazil, from 23 to 29 March 2026, the Convention adopted 39 resolutions on subjects across the whole treaty, renewable energy among them, and added or upgraded 40 species and populations on its protection lists. 132 countries plus the European Union took part, according to Agencia Brasil, a Brazilian public news agency, citing the meeting own president. A Convention resolution is not a suggestion. It binds every government that signed the treaty.

One important aspect of this convention is worth highlighting, it is legally binding. This means the signatory countries must comply with its decisions. It has legal force.

Joao Paulo Capobianco, president of the meeting where the Convention adopted the resolution. Source 5.

That legal weight is why the renewed task force mandate matters for any company planning a wind or solar project in a country that signed the Convention. The mandate itself changed little in scale, the same categories of countries and organizations as before, but the push for public monitoring data is new. For now, the count a developer actually gets is a map of migration routes in 8 countries and 1 funded bat study, not a global tally of what renewable energy has cost migratory animals so far.