MOUND CITY, Mo. • A company that had planned to build the largest wind farm in Missouri near several wildlife areas has decided to look elsewhere because modifications needed to protect the area's animals made it financially unworkable.

Element Power, based in Oregon, had proposed erecting 84 to 188 wind turbines near Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge in Holt County and seven nearby conservation areas. The company, which had been studying the project for five years, had leased 30,000 acres of private land near the wildlife areas since 2010.

Squaw Creek, about 100 miles north of Kansas City, has more than 7,400 acres of wetlands, fields and grassland that attract several birds, including pelicans, wood ducks, trumpeter swans, blue-winged teals, sandhill cranes, blue herons, snow geese and smaller shorebirds.

The proposed location of the wind farm was criticized by the Missouri Department of Conservation, environmentalists and birding groups, who said it would endanger the millions of birds and bats that migrate through the area.