Rome - Wind farms in Italy threaten to wipe out the Golden Eagle, farmers` organisation Coldiretti and national environmental organisations said Wednesday.

A conference against wind power in Rome heard that huge numbers of birds are already being killed when they collide with the spokes of wind towers in Italy.

"Wind farm building continues unchecked and within a few years we will witness the almost total disappearance from the Apennine mountains and from Sicily of the Golden Eagle, the Bonelli`s Eagle, the Griffon Vulture, the Red Kite and many others," the groups said.

They raised the alarm especially for the Abruzzo region, especially in the mountains around its capital, L`Aquila, where wind farms threaten to result in the disappearance of the Golden Eagle and the Griffon Vulture "in a very short time".

Coldiretti warned that wind farms have increased by 35% in the last year, with more than 3,600 towers transforming around 10,000 km of land into a "desert" as long as a motorway.

The organisation called for urgent guidelines on wind power, warning that the current "indiscriminate spread" did not take note of the impact on the landscape nor on economic activities such as tourism and farming.

Investment in wind power was increasing in a way that was "unbalanced compared to other forms of renewable energy," it said.

Most of Italy`s existing wind farms are concentrated in southern regions and the islands of Sicily and Sardinia.

Already common in Spain and parts of northern Europe, wind farms have started to catch on in Italy in recent years, especially in the wake of government incentives aimed at encouraging power production from renewable sources.

Groups promoting renewable energy argue that wind and sun are the energy sources of the future. But their spread has sparked a reaction from the
anti-wind power lobby which says that wind stations require new roads and electricity lines, which further disturb the countryside; lower the value of land and make it useless for tourist purposes; and regularly mangle birds.