A proposed Highland County wind farm would kill few birds, but its effect on bats is worthy of detailed study, the developer's lawyer says.

The bat issue "is probably going to require most of our attention and resources going forward," lawyer John W. Flora of Harrisonburg said yesterday.

Research elsewhere indicates the 19 windmills would pose little threat to birds, so there is no need for avian studies that state officials want done before construction, Flora said.

Tom Smith, director of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation's natural-heritage program, said detailed research is needed on the windmills' potential to kill birds and bats.

"It's very hard to say there's not a significant impact [on birds] and not a need for additional studies," Smith said.

Highland New Wind Development, run by Henry T. McBride of Harrisonburg, is proposing the windmills for two 4,300-foot-high ridges in Highland, about 150 miles northwest of Richmond.

Each windmill would stand nearly 400 feet tall -- about the height of the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond. The project would be Virginia's first major wind farm.

The state Department of Environmental Quality is coordinating a state environmental review. Other agencies pass their concerns to the DEQ, which will eventually pass those concerns, with the developer's responses, to the State Corporation Commission. The SCC will approve or reject the project.

Last week, Flora gave the DEQ a written response to questions, particularly about birds and bats, raised earlier by some agencies. Windmill opponents say "birds migrate along ridgelines, [but] all of the studies prove otherwise," Flora said in an accompanying letter.

Instead, Flora said in an interview, scientific literature shows the birds move across a "broad front."

The conservation department and the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries have recommended the developers fund, before construction, at least a year's worth of study of bird and bat activity on the Highland ridges.

Asked about Flora's stance that the bird research is not needed, the game department's Ray Fernald said he could not comment because he had not seen Flora's written response.

On Feb. 24, the game department responded to a radar study that a Highland New Wind consultant performed on the ridges during two months last year. The game department said the wind farm might produce "the highest mortality rates in the East" for birds and bats.

Bryan Watts, director of the College of William and Mary's Center for Conservation Biology, said yesterday that birds do migrate along Appalachian ridges, but concentrations can be "extremely variable" from place to place.

"You do have some hot spots, and all of those have not been mapped within the Appalachian region," he said.

Bats became an issue for Appalachian windmills in 2004, when studies showed that two wind farms, in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, killed hundreds of bats in six weeks.

In a related matter, the state Department of Historic Resources has said it wants a "viewshed analysis" to show where the windmills would be seen.

Flora said that study is not needed, either. The windmills would be visible from a distance, but in rural Highland there would be few people to gaze upon them, he said. Plus, the Highland Board of Supervisors addressed that issue before approving the project last year, Flora said.

The DEQ should relate to the SCC not only the project's potential environmental problems but its benefits, including the fact that it will not produce water or air pollution, Flora said. "There should be some balance in the process."

DEQ spokesman Bill Hayden said the SCC will get "all of the perspectives."

Contact staff writer Rex Springston at rspringston@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6453.