Massive Bird Kill and Suggestion That Recent Similar Major Kill at Stetson Has Been Hushed Up

The person who directed me to this article wrote in her email that "there was a similar major bird kill by the turbines at Stetson recently..but this has apparently been hushed up".

 

I can't verify this so please regard accordingly while remembering "where there's smoke, there's fire".

thursday, october 27, 2011

Blackpoll Warbler kill at wind farm

 

AES Corporation's Laurel Mountain Wind Farm, photo from West Virginia Highlands Conservancy website.

The massive Laurel Mountain Wind Farm, near Elkins, West Virginia was just opened officially with a ribbon-cutting ceremony today, but it's already making news in a most ungreenfriendly way. Word is leaking out regarding a massive kill of migratory songbirds that took place about two weeks ago at one of the turbine farm's installations. According to the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources, 484 birds perished after striking a structure associated with this twelve mile string of 61 mountaintop turbines. Most of the birds were Blackpoll Warblers. Blackpolls are champions of long distance migration, breeding to the northern limits of the boreal forest in Canada, Alaska, and in the northeastern lower states, mostly in New England. Their migration is an epic journey that spans much of the Americas, with the birds ending up in South America where they overwinter.

Not all the facts seem to be out yet - and I'm not sure why it took two weeks for this tragedy to come to light - but it appears that the birds were NOT killed by being pureed after flying into a spinning turbine. As the farm was just officially dedicated TODAY, I'm not sure that the turbines were even fired up and spinning two weeks ago.

Apparently a bank of bright lights that are used to provide illumination at a substation were left on overnight during cloudy, low-visibility conditions. The birds became disoriented by the lights - a common occurrence with brightly lit structures - and perished after flying into the building. Even though it apparently was not the turbines themselves that caused this disaster, it should serve as a red flag. Large numbers of songbirds migrate along Allegheny and Appalachian mountain ridges, and clearly lots of birds pass through the Laurel Mountain turbine gauntlet. Future occurrences of this type should be avoidable by merely turning the lights off, at least during peak migratory periods. But it is a huge open question as to whether birds will still strike the spinning turbines at night. I hope that someone conducts diligent monitoring at this farm to determine whether this kill will prove to be an isolated incident, or if indeed we have another Altamont Pass on our hands.

Industry, environmental groups, and politicians alike are rushing pell-mell into the supposedly "green" wind industry. Ohio is one of the front lines, as many a plan is afoot to site turbines along, and in, Lake Erie. And Lake Erie is one of THE major migratory corridors for birds in the Great Lakes region. I think that sites do exist where wind turbines probably will not cause much, if any, bird or bat mortality. But it is becoming increasingly demonstrable that some of the best locations for harvesting wind are also major migratory pathways for birds, and wind farms and birds mix about as well as oil and water.

Poorly sited wind farms are akin to fracking the air. The collateral damage to migratory animals can be unacceptable in terms of outright kills. But another factor that is seldom written about involves the terrestrial fragmentation that comes with the installation of these facilities (this includes fracking, too). Access roads must be carved into forests or Great Plains prairie, large footprints must be stamped out for the physical facilities, and towers and wires strung or buried to transmit the electricity. Individually, it is hard - maybe impossible - to prove ecological damage caused by a single turbine installation. But add them all up and we start to instigate death by a thousand cuts, at least for some species.
http://jimmccormac.blogspot.com/2011/10/blackpoll-warbler-kill-at-w...

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Comment by matt elliot on November 1, 2011 at 9:09am
How many cats kill Bald Eagle's   ,,    and disrupt moose and deer trails.
Comment by Long Islander on October 30, 2011 at 6:10pm
First Wind would say that cats kill more birds. What they don't say is that with 75 million cats in the U.S. and maybe 20,000 turbines, it's just one more misleading statement from the wind industry's desperate playbook.
Comment by Mike DiCenso on October 30, 2011 at 2:28pm
PS   The pic looks like mtn top removal by the coal industry.
Comment by Mike DiCenso on October 30, 2011 at 2:27pm
I would like to see a display at shopping malls with big posters of these projects, just so the public can see what they really look like. During the Christmas season would be a great way to educate a lot of people. FirstWind would say, these birds have an average life span of 3 years so it doesn't matter or something equally absurd. I dislike these liars and scammers more every day.
Comment by Scarlett on October 29, 2011 at 10:46pm
Stantec did the EA for the Laurel Mountain project.  In it, Pelletier says: "Most night-flying birds pass over Laurel Mountain in a broad front pattern, flying high above the ridgeline and the height of proposed turbines."  Another poor Enviornmental Assessment by Stantec, telling the wind companies what they want to hear.  Where's the oversight on these environmental consultants?
Comment by Bob Brooks on October 29, 2011 at 8:19am
Someone asked e why I was on an OWS march yesterday. This is why. Lying corporations with government complicity are ruining our earth. Not to mention many other things. GO OWS!

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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