In the desert of New Mexico, the installation of a solar plant of 1.100 acres posed a challenge for the pronghorn, the fastest land mammal in North America. A study that followed the females revealed that the animals did not avoid the area at all. Actually they used the corridors and opened spaces that remained between the fences of the solar panels.
Pronghorn can be really, really fast. They can reach speeds close to 60 mph, but the fences for them are not like they are for deer that jump over—they prefer to crawl beneath the barriers.
What the collars found around San Juan Solar
Wildlands Network started to collect and observe in two specific areas. The construction of San Juan was already in process and was finished in autumn, creating a rare opportunity to observe how the animals responded as the landscape changed.
The farm has roads, the private property lines, and dry arroyos that obliged the developers basically to divide it, leaving passages with different widths and lengths between the panels. So yes, the pronghorn used those open spaces! They preferred to stay in the passages where there was more space, but sometimes they were on the other side, which shows that it is not only one single thing they choose.
A gap is not automatically a wildlife corridor
Researchers say that the future design of solar farms should leave more space between the fences and the rivers, cliffs, roads… any natural limit. Also, they suggest that before starting with the construction, with all the previous tracking data and cameras, it should be checked which parts of the land have a lot of wildlife.
At San Juan it can be found a steep arroyo. And the GPS points showed that pronghorn in very few cases entered the places where there was less space near the fence.
Why the early result needs caution
Wildlands Network also says that the conclusions they reached can change and that they cannot be used as a proof that pronghorn adapt easily to any solar project. Even another study, but in a different Solar Farm, Sweetwater, arrived at conclusions that can be read as a problem. After the construction, pronghorn visits and habitats went down. Even the space outside the farm was having less of the species.
These results show that not all the solar panels produce one universal wildlife response. Also, there are many details (such as passage shape or fencing) that can actually define if a project is still permeable or becomes a barrier.
Solar planning now has a wildlife test
Still, researchers, specifically for San Juan Solar, say that the site is still part of the best habitat available for the monitored animals. And this means that the movement around the fences is good, although it of course does not replace the land covered by the whole infrastructure.
The challenge here is that clean energy and wildlife connectivity is not a one-way choice, because for example the paths can be wider, the separations can be smart. and the protection of the areas that are for feeding can be considered during planning.
BLM wildlife biologist Ryan McBee said that the goal is to better understand the relationship between wildlife and renewable energy developments on public lands, and sometimes that is the biggest problem: to combine both.
