Are birds and bats in Appalachia a state-level issue or a national issue when it comes to siting wind generation facilities?

The question is yet to be resolved in the shadow of bird and bat kills at the state's one operating wind generation facility, the Mountaineer Wind Energy Center in Tucker County.

The Appalachian corridor is a major migratory flyway, according to Dan Boone, wildlife biologist and policy analyst.

"The eastern U.S. has a much higher level of migration than the midwest or the west," Boone said.

Boone counters those who are inclined to dismiss the issue as an environmental rant aimed at stopping development. He said birds and bats provide essential environmental services: Just as deer populations exploded in the absence of wolves, populations of disease-spreading mosquitos, for example, could explode without bats to control them.

As it stands now, the responsibility for considering the siting of proposed wind generation projects rests fully with the state Public Service Commission.

The PSC seeks a year of pre-construction monitoring for birds and bats and then considers the data under consultation with the state Division of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, according to Jim Ellars, chief utilities manager in the commission's engineering division.

"We discuss these projects with them on an informal level, and they routinely send us information and input on their concerns," Ellars said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommends a full three years of pre-construction monitoring before a siting decision is made for areas with high concentrations of nocturnal migrants. That potentially could include the entire Appalachian range.

But those in the industry say "it's only a recommendation," and no one follows it.

"I don't know of a wind project in the U.S. that's done three years of pre-construction monitoring," said David Groberg, project developer for the 124-turbine installation Beech Ridge Energy LLC proposes in Greenbrier County.

"I think a requirement to do three years of pre-construction monitoring would shut down the industry for three years -- and provide scientific information of questionable value," Groberg said.

"If you talk to people who understand this issue, they'll agree that what's needed right now is not a moratorium," he said. "What's needed is more study: We don't understand the issue."

If its Greenbrier County facility is permitted, Beech Ridge Energy plans to test operational strategies for minimizing bird and bat kills during its first three years of operation.

"Most mortality seems to be occurring at very low wind speeds," he said by way of example. "When you raise the minimum wind speed at which the turbines start making electricity and as a result at which the blades start turning, does that minimize mortality? ... Maybe we can reduce mortality but only miss as little of the wind as possible."

But wildlife biologist Boone, who has followed the development of wind energy in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, would like to see the USFWS pre-construction monitoring recommendations followed.

"I want to see wind energy adequately evaluated and appropriately sited," Boone said.

"There are some really good places we could put wind that would have low impacts," he added. "I think we need to tackle our energy policy not on a state-by-state basis ... but on a national basis."

In fact, the issue is under national-level consideration. The National Research Council, under congressional mandate, is conducting a study aimed at integrating environmental impacts into siting decisions for wind generation facilities.

Committee members can't discuss the study until it's complete. But at least five of the committee's 16 members have expertise in birds or bats, and the committee seems to be studying the issue in detail.

"I can tell you that some of the factors that one would need to worry about are when do the birds migrate, what altitude do they migrate at, what kind of weather do they migrate in and how does that interact with the placement and activity of wind turbines," said study director David Policansky.

The committee's report is due out in December. Although its recommendations will not be binding, Policansky said, "People take us more seriously than they take other groups."