AS a wildlife lover the possible threat to birds was the aspect of the proposed turbine at Tidenham that concerned me. 

Researching online, all the articles I could find all agreed that building strikes kill more birds than any other cause.

Domestic cats are probably the second biggest cause of death (obviously no-one has exact numbers) followed by power line electrocutions and collisions.

Agricultural pesticides and traffic collisions also kill huge numbers.

Communications towers kill far less than all the above but still at least 20 times as many as are killed by wind turbines.

Unfortunately we need power and it has to be generated somehow. Studies show that fossil fuelled power stations kill 34 times as many birds per gigawatt produced as do wind turbines.

I consulted the RSPB website and saw that they are deeply concerned about the damage that global warming is causing to bird populations and that they therefore support wind turbines provided they are sited appropriately.

RSPB's conservation director, Martin Harper, says a large body of scientific evidence  shows "appropriately located windfarms have negligible impacts" on bird populations. Of course the Severndale turbine would be an individual turbine, so would have less impact than a windfarm.

The Severndale turbine application has a professionally produced ecology report with birds counted over a long period of time – obviously the number of birds that would be killed depends on how many would fly into or very close to the turbine.

Apparently birds and bats tend to fly along hedgerows and linear landscape features, rather than across the areas in between, so the site being between the railway line and the road would reduce the numbers flying near considerably.

Natural England, who have been consulted as part of the application, have suffered drastic cuts to their workforce in the last few years but hopefully their response will be by someone qualified and experienced enough to determine whether the site is "appropriately located".

Although I'm not professionally qualified to comment on the ecology report, after reading it on the Forest of Dean District Council planning portal, it seems to me that the applicants have done everything they can to find the right site and that the turbine would actually reduce bird deaths by reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

– John Aubry, Cinderford.