Turbines already are taking a heavy toll in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Game Commission released a report last spring showing the death rate is highest for bats, which additionally face being wiped out by a mysterious phenomenon called "white-nose syndrome." The evidence has mounted since studies in 2004 showed 1,500 to 4,000 bats annually were killed by the 44 turbines on West Virginia's Backbone Mountain.

Wind farms occasionally kill birds and their construction disrupts marine life, a new broad survey shows. But the results of the report will have no immediate effect on New Jersey's massive offshore wind projects, state officials said Monday. The 312-page report by the state Department of Environmental Protection offers few details on the overall impact of the almost 300 wind turbines slated to be built off the coast of Atlantic City.

Ongoing studies of birds, marine mammals and sea turtles off the Jersey Shore have found an abundance of life in an area where hundreds of wind turbines could be spinning by 2020, participants in a public meeting said today. ..."We're trying to figure out where are the areas of sensitive habitat, if you will, areas that perhaps we should think twice about or avoid before we build something," he said. "The objective here is to try and steer these facilities to areas where impacts will be reduced."