Better Plan, Wisconsin

ENERGY IN AMERICA: SACRIFICE OF PROTECTED BIRDS UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE OF WIND POWER DEVELOPMENT

SOURCE www.foxnews.com

17 August 2011

As California attempts to divorce itself from fossil-fueled electricity, it may be trading one environmental sin for another — although you don’t hear state officials admitting it.

Wind power is the fastest growing component in the state’s green energy portfolio, but wildlife advocates say the marriage has an unintended consequence: dead birds, including protected species of eagles, hawks and owls.

“The cumulative impacts are huge,” said Shawn Smallwood, one of the few recognized experts studying the impact of wind farms on migratory birds. “It is not inconceivable to me that we could reduce golden eagle populations by a great deal, if not wipe them out.”

California supports roughly 2,500 golden eagles. The state’s largest wind farms kill, on average, more than 80 eagles per year. But the state is set to triple wind capacity in the coming years as it tries to become the first state in the nation to generate 33 percent of its electricity from clean energy sources by 2020.

“We would like to have no bird deaths and no bird injuries. But, once again, we have to balance all the needs of society. All the people who want to flip their switch and have electricity in their homes,” said Lorelei Oviatt, Kern County planning commissioner.

Kern County has identified some 225,000 acres just north of Los Angeles as a prime wind resource area. Unfortunately, the area’s rolling hills and mountains are prime hunting grounds for raptors and a layover spot for migratory birds traveling between Canada and Mexico. The updrafts enjoyed by birds of prey are ideal for generating power.

“I’m not against wind power — it is a viable form of energy generation — but it needs to be developed more carefully,” Smallwood said.

Case in point: In the Bay Area, when activists in the 1980s demanded a cleaner planet, the state responded with the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area. The state-approved wind farm, built with federal tax credits, kills 4,700 birds annually, including 1,300 raptors, among them 70 golden eagles, according to biological reports generated on behalf of the owners.

Smallwood said replacing the small, older turbines with larger blades has cut some species fatalities roughly in half.

Oviatt said Kern County is trying to learn from Altamont’s mistakes.

“We’re requiring full environmental impact reports, which take at least 12 to 18 months,” Oviatt said. “Can I promise that a bird will never be injured or killed? I can’t. But again, we have this tradeoff in society, between the things we need to function as an economy and the fact that we wanna make sure we have an environment for future generations.”

Pine Tree is one of the wind farms in Kern County and is operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. According to an internal DWP bird and bat mortality report for the year ending June 2010, bird fatality rates were “relatively high” at Pine Tree compared to 45 other wind facilities nationwide. The facility’s annual death rate per turbine is three times higher for golden eagles than at Altamont.

“Politics plays a huge role here,” Smallwood said. “Our leaders want this power source so they’re giving, for a time being, a pass to the wind industry. If you or I killed an eagle, we’re looking at major consequences.”

Smallwood and others say it is almost inconceivable the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces the U.S. Endangered Species Act, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, hasn’t acted.

“There’s a big, big hypocrisy here,” Sue Hammer of Tehachapi Wildlife Rehab in Kern County said. “If I shoot an eagle, it’s a $10,000 fine and/or a vacation of one to five years in a federal pen of my choice.”

She’s not far off from the reality.

In 2009, Exxon pleaded guilty to causing the deaths of about 85 migratory birds in five states that came into contact with crude oil in uncovered waste tanks. The fine for this was $600,000.

Likewise, PacifiCorp, an Oregon utility, owed $10.5 million in fines, restitution and improvements to their equipment after 232 eagles were killed by running into power lines in Wyoming.

And in 2005, the owner of a fish hatchery was ordered to serve six months in a federal halfway house and pay a $65,000 fine for shooting an eagle that was feeding at his uncovered hatchery.

Wind power in the U.S. generates 41,400 megawatts of electricity. California represents just a fraction of that total, suggesting the number of raptor kills is considerably higher nationwide. Yet according to records, USFWS has not prosecuted a single company for violating one of the many statutes protecting threatened and endangered birds.

A LETTER FROM SAVE THE EAGLES INTERNATIONAL

Re: USFWS revised draft Land-based Wind Energy Guidelines

Dear Sirs,

These are the comments of Save the Eagles International (STEI) regarding the above subject.

A) - We believe the proposed Guidelines are replacing the precautionary principle with “adaptive management”, which in essence means: build first and deal with real impacts on biodiversity later. This will have catastrophic consequences for many bird and bat species. But perhaps it already has, for this lax policy is not new to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

To wit the now doomed Whooping Crane. In your issue paper on that critically endangered species, we read that 2,433 wind turbines - and their power lines which are so deadly to these birds - have been erected in the United States portion of the Whooping Crane migrating corridor, and that thousands more are to come (1).

With so many deadly obstacles in their path, no amount of “compensation” as recommended in the Guidelines will save the flock that flies this corridor.  It is currently composed of 247 Whooping Cranes, and is the only viable flock of this species in the world (1). It is surprising that the FWS would have been lax enough to permit such a crime.

Knowing as we do the dedication and commitment to wildlife exhibited by so many FWS employees, we can only surmise that this biodiversity disaster in the making is a reflection of the degree of political pressure that is being wielded on the Service. The composition of the Federal Advisory Committee (FAC) in charge of steering the revision of the Guidelines is eloquent: it is so heavily loaded in favor of the windfarm industry that the bird and bat species of concern won’t stand a chance.

STEI thinks that existing and planned windfarm developments have already condemned the Whooping Crane and the California Condor to survival in captivity. The next species to disappear from US skies could be the golden eagle.

B) - Much of the effort of the Guidelines is to provide for mitigation and “compensation”, while providing for the issue of “take permits”, i.e. licenses to kill species of concern. As someone said about the windfarm invasion of Maine’s eagle habitat, this amounts to “killing the babies here, and building an orphanage there”. - It won’t wash.

Mitigation and compensation never succeeded in the past - to wit the windfarms of Altamont Pass (California), Smola (Norway), Woolnorth (Tasmania), etc. Nothing permits to say they will succeed in the future. The precautionary principle should be applied here, but conservation wisdom seems to have disappeared from the philosophy of the Fish and Wildlife Service, at least where windfarms are concerned.

Windfarms are erected in the most windy spots, which are also sought by raptors for added lift. So they kill a great many of these birds. Trying to compensate by protecting raptor habitat elsewhere, generally in areas less attractive to raptors, is a fool’s bargain.

C) - The Guidelines have done away with another sound principle of conservation, which is to consider cumulative impacts. They adopt a case-by-case, salami-slicing approach that makes a mockery of that principle. The words “cumulative effects” do appear in the Guidelines, but in a lip-service fashion.

D) - The Guidelines are, in our opinion, useless where biodiversity protection is concerned, because they continue to rely on environmental impact assessments commissioned and controlled by wind farm developers. Asking businessmen to evaluate the risk that their projects will represent for birds and bats is not just absurd: it is laughable. There are many consultants willing to manipulate and deceive, predicting very low mortality provided the money is good. Effectively, windfarm developers have been quick to find the most complacent among them, whose names keep coming in front of our eyes over and over again. STEI has been denouncing these worthless studies many times, be they pre-construction of post construction. A notable exception has been those by Dr Shawn Smallwood, and a few other researchers while not in the employ of wind farm operators or other constraining sponsors.

E) - The Guidelines pave the way for the routine deliverance of licenses to kill protected or endangered species (in bureaucratic jargon, a “take permit”). A new name was even coined to allow the killing of an undetermined number of eagles by a single windfarm: the “programmatic take permit” (1). In STEI’s opinion, this spells the doom of the golden eagle in the US, and a notable decline in bald eagle populations.

F) - STEI opines that the Guidelines, actually, constitute a road-map showing windfarm developers how to proceed to site their projects anywhere they please, even where they will kill Eagles or Whooping Cranes. If they use the bureaucratic jargon, follow the bureaucratic steps described in the “Decision Framework Using a Tiered Approach”, and talk to the Service, they will be judged with leniency if their windfarms end up having serious adverse effects on the environment. The Guidelines themselves say so:

“The Service urges voluntary adherence to the guidelines and communication with the Service when planning and operating a facility. In the context of voluntary guidelines, it is not possible to absolve individuals or companies from MBTA or BGEPA liability, but the Service will regard such voluntary adherence and communication as evidence of due care with respect to avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating significant adverse impacts to species protected under the MBTA and BGEPA, and will take such adherence and communication fully into account when exercising its discretion with respect to any potential referral for prosecution related to the death of or injury to any such species.”

Note: the 5-tier assessment process proposed by the Guidelines has no value if the developers themselves or their consultants do the footwork, which is the case.

G) - However lax and inefficient are the proposed Guidelines, making them voluntary is yet another concession to the FAC, i.e. to windfarm developers, and against bird and bat species of concern.

Conclusion

It boggles the mind that, at a time where all attempts have failed to adequately mitigate and compensate for the carnage of raptors at Altamont Pass, Guidelines would be proposed that rely basically on mitigation and compensation, and pave the way for more eagle and other mortality through the issuance of take permits.

Having criticised the proposed Guidelines, STEI wishes to propose some positive measures that would help reduce the ill-siting of wind turbines in areas where they will kill eagles and other threatened species.

1) - STEI recommends that no windfarms be allowed within 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) of eagle nests. This is what the Spanish Ornithological Society recommended in its first version of their current guidelines. They then rapidly published a new version in which their recommendation had been watered down into a warning that there may be a risk to eagles if windfarms were installed within 15 km of their nests. Obviously, pressure had been applied upon the bird society, which is member of Birdlife International. But the idea remains the same: within 15 km, breeding eagles may be killed.

As for young roaming eagles, they may be killed anywhere, especially on hilltops and mountain ridges. Indeed this is where eagles fly to get added lift from deflected winds, and where most windfarms are located for their prevailing windy conditions.

Eagles and windfarms are therefore on a collision course. The great birds’ future is very bleak.

2) - STEI recommends that environmental impact assessments should be conducted by independent experts neither chosen, paid, or controlled by windfarm interests. To finance these studies, we propose that developers pay $300,000 to $500,000 upfront when applying for a permit to build any windfarm, the exact amount depending on the sensitiveness of the area. The experts would be chosen jointly by USFWS and NGO’s renowned for not supporting blindly the wind industry (e.g. the American Bird Conservancy or STEI). We also recommend that these studies be made over 3 years pre-construction, by at least two qualified ornithologists. Any excess monies should be pooled by FWS and used to finance other independent studies to help understand the lethal relationship birds/bats/windfarms.

STEI doesn’t receive any money at all. We are all volunteers. This allows us to say what we think, which is that biodiversity is in grave peril, and that windfarms are the cause. Cats and windows don’t kill eagles and whooping cranes. Windfarms and their power lines do.

Mark Duchamp    
President, Save the Eagles International
http://www.savetheeaglesinternational.org

References:

(1) - WHOOPING CRANES AND WIND DEVELOPMENT - AN ISSUE PAPER
By Regions 2 and 6, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service - April 2009

FROM MINNESOTA

DEBATE GROWS OVER WIND TURBINES IN THE PATH OF EAGLES

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT THE SOURCE: KARE11.com

July 26, 2011

By Trisha Volpe

GOODHUE COUNTY, Minn. -- Next to the crops, an environmental debate is growing in Goodhue County farm country - green energy on one side and saving wildlife on the other.

"Like a lot of farmers in the area, it's pretty deep in tradition," says local dairy farmer Bruce McNamara.

The McNamara farm has been in the area for 60 years. Bruce and his wife Marie are now worried about what could happen to their land and the birds they share it with, when a wind turbine project moves forward.

"Energy facilities should be sited in an orderly manner and they're clustered right over eagles' nests," says Marie, who is also a member of a local citizens group against a project to build wind turbines in the area.

The developer, AWA Goodhue Wind, plans to build 50 to 60 wind turbines over several thousand acres. Some residents and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are concerned the turbines will interfere with eagles nesting and feeding. There are at least four confirmed nests in the area according to fish and wildlife officials.

"The issue we're more concerned about is the birds flying into them and being killed," says Mags Rheude of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The developer says it's done everything possible to protect the eagles and doesn't believe their travel patterns bring the birds in the path of the turbines. The company has conducted several environmental studies, many still ongoing.

"We're probably 150 hours field time watching and monitoring eagle movements," says Ron Peterson, Director of Environmental Services for Westwood, the environmental consultant working with Goodhue.

Company officials say the issue may be about more than just eagles. Many landowners have bought into the project and turbines will be located on their farms.

"People who aren't participating or benefitting financially... don't want to look at them or listen to them if they're close enough to them," says Peterson.

The project has the go-ahead from the Public Utilities Commission, but in order to receive its permit Goodhue Wind has to conduct more studies and come up with a bird and bat management plan.

Goodhue hopes to start construction on the turbines by the end of the year.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is recommending a two mile buffer zone between turbines and the eagles.

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD:

 The photo below was found on the Westwood Land and Energy Development Consultants website where the 'company biologist' Ron Peterson (mentioned in the previous article) is said to work. Wind companies often employ the services of one-stop-shopping 'consulting' firms like Westwood. The caption for the photo below reads: "We've been dancing through the years!"

Photo from Westwood Land and Energy Website