The NamPower-Namibia Nature Foundation Strategic Partnership

Why an industry-conservation partnership?

Conservation: Electricity provision has an impact on birds (and other wildlife) through collisions and electrocutions (could be prevented with appropriate planning and mitigation).

Industry: Inconvenient outages (blackouts) caused by wildlife electrocutions, resulting in high maintenance and repair costs (is also preventable).

How did the partnership come about?

A key output of the Raptors Namibia action plan is to manage raptor populations and habitats by addressing threats outlined in the Red Data Book, including electrocution and collisions with overhead lines.

In view of the rapidly increasing power line network coverage across Namibia, Raptors Namibia approached NamPower due to a concern over the:

potential threat and the unknown extent of mortality to large raptors on power lines
smaller power lines not being mapped.

At the same time, NamPower was concerned about the inconvenient outages (blackouts) and high maintenance and repair costs caused by bird (wildlife) electrocutions.

What is the partnership's mission?

To provide a multi-disciplinary mechanism to assist NamPower to manage its impacts on the natural environment and vice versa, and to develop a biodiversity information resource that will assist Namibian environmental and industry role players to manage impacts on Namibia's biodiversity. (Birds will initially form the focus of the project, with the aim to expand it in due course to other natural resources).

What are the objectives?

Develop a dynamic web-based Environmental Information Service (EIS); a 'one-stop-shop' for public environmental information in Namibia (including the mapping of all power lines in Namibia).
Promote awareness of the risks that power lines pose to birds, and birds to power lines.
Train electricity staff in the management of bird interactions with power line networks.
Monitor and investigate power line/bird mortality incidents.
Incorporate bird mitigation into the planning of future electricity networks.

What are the expected outputs?

Public access to a dynamic web-based Environmental Information Service (EIS) in Namibia.
A variety of stakeholders will become involved in monitoring, awareness and training.
The conservation of Namibia's biodiversity, in particular its birdlife, will be actively promoted, thereby also benefiting tourism and the economy.
Costs from blackouts caused by wildlife related faulting will be reduced.
The incorporation of biodiversity mitigation into the planning of future power line networks will reduce impacts and maintenance costs in the long term.

How you can become involved

Register with the project as a stakeholder. We need your help to build our database of relevant information which will become the basis of our dynamic to a dynamic web-based Environmental Information Service (EIS) for Namibia.
For now, we specifically need information on bird/ wildlife interactions (e.g. mortality, nesting, roosting, etc.) on power lines in your area.

For more information, contact Mike and Ann Scott.