Bird flight diverters aim to cut collision risk 43% to 85%
Safelines4Birds, a European Union funded project running from 2023 to 2028, plans to install 3,880 bird flight diverters, small markers clipped onto a power line so a bird can see the wire and avoid flying into it, along 60 kilometers of the highest risk power lines in France and Belgium. The project states those installations should cut collision risk for vulnerable bird species by an estimated 43% to 85%, depending on location and conditions, whatever method installs them. Coordinated by LPO, a French bird protection group, the project brings together 15 partners across France, Belgium, Portugal, Germany and the United States, including grid operators on both the transmission and distribution side plus conservation groups and scientific experts.
This estimate covers all 3,880 diverters once installed along the 60 kilometers of targeted lines, however installed, not only where drones are used.
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| Estimated cut in collision risk for vulnerable species | 43% to 85% |
Drones aim to double how many bird flight diverters go up each day
Reaching every span of wire, especially towers and stretches that ground crews cannot easily get to, is why the project is now testing drones as a new way to attach the devices, in France. The project describes the goal plainly.
By using drones, the goal is to double the daily installation capacity, allowing more devices to be deployed across a wider range of environments.
The Safelines4Birds project, in its own published project material. Source 1.
That doubling goal is about installation speed and reach, not the collision percentage above. No source states the current daily installation rate, only that drones aim to double whatever that rate is today, and no source ties the drone method itself to a bigger or smaller collision cut.
Targets differ by species, not one shared goal
The official European Union project database, a record kept by the funding body itself rather than the project website, lists separate numeric targets by species that do not appear on the project website in this much detail. Northern lapwing, Eurasian curlew and Eurasian woodcock get an 80% target cut in mortality caused by power lines. Lesser kestrel gets a 90% target cut in electrocutions at target sites. Black stork and osprey get a 100% target, eliminating disturbance events entirely. A fourth species, White stork, gets a different kind of target, preserving at least 158 pairs in France and Portugal rather than a percentage.
These 3 targets measure 3 different outcomes, collision deaths, electrocutions and disturbance events, not the same measure at different sites.
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| Lapwing curlew and woodcock collision deaths | 80 |
| Kestrel electrocutions at target sites | 90 |
| Stork and osprey disturbance events | 100 |
A helicopter already fitted 6 kilometers near the Verdon
RTE, the French transmission grid operator and a project partner, has already fitted 6 kilometers of overhead line near the Verdon with 262 avispheres, red or luminescent spherical markers, using a helicopter rather than a drone. Of that total, 17 spans were marked in a first phase, with 116 more markers scheduled for 2027. The work was framed around the Cinereous Vulture and scheduled outside its nesting period, and it shows what the method that does not use a drone already looks like at 1 real site under the same project.