Age and season-related habitat selection patterns of the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) in the Swiss Alps: a basis for predicting conflict-zones with wind energy construction

The recent increase of wind energy use in Central Europe incurs potential impacts on wildlife. Large soaring raptors, like the bearded vulture, are particularly exposed to collision risk with wind turbines as they sometimes converge in selecting fairly similar combinations of landscape and wind conditions. Considerable efforts and resources have been invested to re-instate the species in the European Alps. There exists a risk, however, that this success will be jeopardized by the sprawl of the wind parks across the alpine massif. We used a maximum entropy modelling approach to predict the potential distribution of the bearded vulture across the Swiss Alpine range using presence-only data. W…