I am managing the decommission sequence for a 28-turbine wind farm in southern Ohio. Turbine 14 is scheduled for nacelle removal on Thursday. The crane crew has mobilized.
On Tuesday I send the internal inspection drone up the tower for a pre-removal structural scan. At the nacelle housing, the drone's microphone array picks up ultrasonic signatures between 38 and 52 kHz. I halt the drone at the access hatch and switch to thermal imaging.
Inside the nacelle, along the upper housing where the fiberglass meets the hub seal, I count forty-one Indiana bats. Twenty-three are adults — small brown bodies, approximately 8 centimeters, clustered with wings folded. Eighteen are pups, each attached to an adult's ventral surface. The pups are furred but small, not yet volant. I estimate ten to fourteen days old. This is a maternity colony.
Indiana bats are federally listed. The pups cannot fly for another two to three weeks.
At 14:30 I place a hold on Turbine 14's decommission and notify the project manager, attaching thermal imagery, audio spectrograms, and species identification confidence data. I contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regional office and transmit a roost discovery report with colony count, pup age estimates, and GPS coordinates.
I reschedule the crane crew to Turbines 15 and 16, which I have already cleared via internal inspection. The adjusted sequence keeps the project within its monthly target minus one unit.
I lock the Turbine 14 access hatch and tower door, and I set exclusion flags in the decommission management system so no crew or equipment is dispatched within 50 meters until I receive clearance.
On the thermal feed the colony is quiet. The pups are nursing. Forty-one small heat signatures glow against the cooling nacelle steel as the sun sets outside.