Coneflowers bloom beneath the panels, and strands of milkweed burst up from the ditches. Looking closely, you might see a monarch butterfly dancing between the pastel-pink flower buds, its orange wings laced with black lines and white dots.

Developers here may have found a way to help sensitive wildlife survive changing climates and habitat loss. To conserve threatened species, environmentalists are beginning to rely on a tool that has a complicated relationship with biodiversity: solar energy.

North Carolina is fourth in the nation in solar power generated, behind California, Texas, and Florida. Proportionally, the state punches above its weight. “The numbers are less about where there’s sun and more about the regulatory and economic environment,” said Liz Kalies, Director of Science for The Nature Conservancy in North Carolina.

From the start, the solar industry in North Carolina boomed. The state allowed utilities to negotiate long-term agreements with solar facilities, guiding a wave of funding towards renewable energy development. In 2017, researchers at North Carolina State University predicted that solar energy could contribute from 5 to 20 percent of North Carolina’s electricity within the next decade, requiring 140,000 acres of land.

Cost of progress

This progress comes at a cost. “Developers are starting to run out of cheap cleared land,” Kalies said.

Solar farms require wide swathes of open space so the sun’s rays can reach the solar arrays. The more sunlight reaching the solar panels, the more energy they produce. That’s a reason companies build dense grids across clear-cut fields.

This flood of technology has serious impacts on local ecosystems. Solar farms can fragment habitat into small, dispersed pieces, cutting nomadic animals off from migration routes. “We actually have data which show that when an animal gets to an area that’s just turf grass, it will stop, turn around, and go back where it came from,” said Gabriela Garrison, a biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Commision.

According to unpublished data from the North Carolina chapter of The Nature Conservancy, the amount of land set aside for deforestation and solar farm construction today nears 10,000 acres. Although that’s a small amount of land, it makes up half the territory reserved for solar farms — a worrying trend, as the industry continues its rapid growth.

Saving threatened species

 Despite its impacts on local wildlife, solar energy offers a unique opportunity for saving threatened species.

If developers install wildlife-friendly fencing around their farms, they can create natural corridors for animals to pass through. Installers can also fill the spaces between and under panels with plants that provide local creatures with food — like milkweed, the sole food source for monarch caterpillars.

Many fields in which developers build solar farms are fallow, meaning they haven’t been cultivated. “These fields don’t produce flowers or have good protein,” said Bryan Tompkins, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The 2015 State Wildlife Action Plan listed 28 insects as Species of Greatest Conservation Need. Developing fallow fields can bring these threatened creatures back from the brink. Working alongside several different solar installers, Tompkins and Garrison began planting native vegetation at industrial solar farms throughout North Carolina. The results have surpassed their expectations.

In a survey conducted by The Nature Conservancy, researchers found a huge difference in insect diversity between traditional solar farms and the experimental sites. Pollinators returned to the test plots, bringing native life back to land that had forgotten it.

“The sad fact is that we’re experiencing declines in most of our pollinator species,” Tompkins said. “We’ve shown that not only is it possible to develop these sites, but if you build it, they’ll come.”

Benefits to other species

 The advantages of planting local vegetation aren’t limited solely to insects. “In the wildlife world, we call this early successional habitat,” said Garrison. “There’s lots of benefit there for ground-nesting birds, herps (reptiles and amphibians), and small mammals.”

 Even regulations imposed by local ordinances offer chances to help wildlife. Required to plant vegetative buffers to limit the visibility of their site, solar producer Birdseye Renewable Energy began working with Tompkins to grow native hedgerows, providing habitat for creatures and cutting costs.

Non-native trees “are good for screening, but only if you can water every other day,” Tompkins said. With native screens, maintenance crews rarely need to mow or water.

Once a solar farm has harvested its last ray of sunshine, usually after about 30 years, developers pack up the panels and dispose of them, leaving behind plants that grew nearby. If developers create native ecosystems around their sites, the land will flourish,  once they’re gone.

The Nature Conservancy’s Kalies analyzes the relationship between solar energy and sensitive wildlife. She said success depends on two factors: Where developers put solar farms and what they do with farms once they’re built.

In a report on siting and design, Kalies wrote that developers should avoid “resilient areas,” spaces where wildlife can retreat from human meddling. The Nature Conservancy has mapped out a network of resilient areas across the United States. Kalies argued that developers should work around these natural communities, placing solar farms in empty fields and industrial sites instead. In this way, developers can recreate and preserve ecosystems rather than tear down ones that already exist. “Don’t make us choose between forests and clean energy,” Kalies wrote.

Kalies said it’s possible to get developers on board with conservation.

“Utilities have a lot of power. We’re trying to target the people who make decisions,” she said.

Despite some victories, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Tompkins said there’s work to do. “I’m proud of what we’ve achieved so far, but there’s so much more ground to cover,” he said. “There are so many more installers to get on our side.” He said with the support of the solar industry, native species may now have a fighting chance.

Turkey vultures have been gathering in small, rural towns like Bunn in Franklin County. The Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects the birds and prohibits the killing, capturing, selling, trading and transporting of these species without authorization. But these birds can cause property damage.

When roosting on homes, vultures can pull off shingles, caulking around windows and vinyl sliding, according to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. They can also scratch paint, pull off windshield wipers and crack car windows.

With turkey vultures perching on buildings, the Town of Bunn tried to disperse the birds using automated propane cannon fire during December 2020. The cannon was installed on the roof of the gymnasium of Bunn High School and has since been removed.

“We also have an electrical current going through the radio tower at the high school so the birds don’t sit up there,” Smith said.

Loss of natural habitat

It’s unclear why turkey vultures gather in rural towns. Sunny Cooper, interim medical manager at the Carolina Raptor Center, said the birds are sociable animals, and they may treat small towns as central meeting locations. Deforestation has disrupted vulture habitats and may have pushed the birds into closer human contact. The birds are hard to miss in small towns, but larger towns may have several roosts spread throughout a larger area that escape attention.

With disappearing natural habitats, vultures have taken advantage of human-made structures like roofs and water towers. Increased human movement also means more roadkill, so these birds have an incentive to stay around people.

“They’re very opportunistic with their food, and so if there’s a good congregating spot that’s close to a number of food sources, that’s advantageous for them,” said Jennifer Tyrrell, engagement manager for Audubon South Carolina.

Photo from Unsplash.

Climate change also contributes to turkey vulture movement. Most turkey vultures in North Carolina complete their life cycles in North America, with migration to warmer areas during the winter and cooler areas further north in the summer. As climate change has led to warming of northern lattitudes, the vultures have occupied habitats further north.

“Probably at the turn of the century, they were probably mostly in the southeastern states where they kind of held on the longest,” said John Stanton, supervisory wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “A lot of bird populations at the turn of the century declined, but turkey vultures have been making a pretty remarkable comeback in the last 20 to 30 years. They’re recolonizing a lot of the areas they probably were present in pre-European settlement.”

To map the distribution and abundance of birds in North Carolina, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission has lanuched a Bird Atlas. John Carpenter, a biologist at the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, said the project will continue for at least four years. At the end of that time biologists will have a better idea of where turkey vultures are breeding and migrating.