2023 was a year full of challenges for at global and national scale. As KAB Ecology, we continued to work hard and here I want to summarize our main achievements in 2023.

Projects:

• We conducted bird monitoring surveys at 10 different sites, acoustic bat monitoring at 2 sites, and carcass monitoring projects at 6 sites. One of these projects was located in Georgia.
• We continued the first turbine shutdown practice in Turkey in the 5th year. In 2023, no migratory soaring bird fatality occurred (that we are aware of).
• We completed fatality monitoring at 5 different sites using international standards. The median mortality rate across Turkey was determined as 24 bats/turbine/year.
• Using the R programming language, we improved our data analysis (especially Collision Risk Modeling) by making it faster and more reliable. We also developed a weekly automatic reporting system for bird and bat mortality and ornithological monitoring studies.
• We increased our success rate in identifying species of bat carcasses using DNA from 45% to 70%. The most common species in our projects were: Pipistrellus nathusii (34%), Nyctalus leisleri (24%) and Pipistrellus pipistrellus (22%).
• For the first time in Turkey, we conducted biodiversity characterization using bird song recorders and identified more than 100 species in a fully industrial area.
• During a flora study, we went beyond identifying plant species to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the project’s environmental impacts. For the first time we used ecological methods to determine whether plant communities within the project impact area were impacted.

Company:

• In April 2023, Biologist Melisa Bal joined our team as Project Coordinator. She has already added great value to the projects.
• We recruited 8 field surveyors for 6 wind farm sites already in operation phase. In addition, we contracted another 6 field surveyors for pre-construction monitoring projects.
• We became more systematic in the accounting part. We organized project proposal records, successfully managing all project budgets and cash flow.

Collaborations:

• We attended the Conference on Wind Energy and Wildlife (CWW 2023) in Croatia and met with academics, international consulting organizations, experts, energy companies, bank representatives and technology companies and other international actors of the sector.
• We organised the first national-scaled meeting of bird surveyors working in wind farms! We also issued certificates for each of them.
• We had one-on-one meetings with international (EBRD, KfW, IFC) and local (TSKB) banks. We started coordination with Turkish Wind Energy Association. We developed our collaborations with General Directorate of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation and Boğaziçi University.