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Roe Deer Clustered More Strongly Inside a Polish Wind Farm

Roe deer running across a field with a wind turbine in the background
Research · Ecology

Roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) were more tightly clustered in an operational wind-farm landscape than in a nearby control area in central Poland. The difference was not explained by direct avoidance of the turbines themselves, leading the authors to suggest that the wider wind-farm landscape may influence how the deer distribute themselves.

Researchers carried out eleven evening drone surveys between late May and early July 2025 near Iłża. Thermal imaging was used to locate deer and colour images to confirm species and sex. The study recorded 104 adult roe deer in the wind-farm area and 116 in the control landscape, so the clearest difference was spatial distribution rather than the number of adults detected.

Roe deer occupied a smaller core area at the wind farm

Deer were clustered in both landscapes, but more strongly inside the wind farm. The area containing the central 50% of detections covered about 2.0 km² in the wind-farm landscape and 2.9 km² in the control area. Within the wind farm, detections were concentrated mainly in the southern part of the study area.

Maps of roe deer core distribution areas in the Polish wind farm and control landscape
Core roe deer distribution areas in the wind-farm and control landscapes. Figure 1 from Gmaj & Klich (2026), European Journal of Wildlife Research, CC BY 4.0.

Inside the wind farm, roe deer tended to occur farther from roads and settlements and closer to forests and small patches of natural vegetation. The same overall set of landscape relationships was not detected in the control area, where only distance from roads showed a clear relationship with deer locations.

The turbines themselves were not clearly avoided

Distance to wind turbines did not explain where the deer were found. The authors therefore did not find evidence that roe deer were directly avoiding the turbines. Instead, they suggest that the stronger spatial compression could reflect indirect effects of the wind-farm landscape, including associated roads, human activity or turbine noise.

These mechanisms were not measured directly. The authors also note that the study compared only one wind farm with one control landscape, and call for similar work at more sites to test whether the same pattern occurs elsewhere.

Sources and image credit

  1. Gmaj, M., & Klich, D. (2026). Impact of wind farm on summer spatial distribution of roe deer Capreolus capreolus – a UAV-based study in central Poland. European Journal of Wildlife Research, 72, Article 21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-026-02060-4Primary peer-reviewed open-access article, published and version of record 3 February 2026. Roe deer were more strongly clustered in the wind-farm landscape than in the nearby control landscape, while distance to turbines did not significantly explain their locations. CC BY 4.0.

Image: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons — roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) jumping across a field shortly after sunrise with a wind turbine in the background at Limbergen, Nottuln, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, photographed 23 April 2021. Illustrative photograph, not from the Polish study. · CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ · Source

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