Lisa Linowes: Protect the Eagles - End USFWS’s 30-Year ‘Take’ Permits

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Comment by Jim Wiegand on March 9, 2017 at 3:39pm

I also posted this information to the article........ Back in 1997 when US installed wind turbine capacity was about 1/35th of what it is today, America had approximately 2200 MW of installed capacity. Eagle mortality was important to the public and the USFWS admitted that wind turbines were one of the primary killers of eagles being shipped to the Denver eagle Repository. The Eagle Repository at that time was receiving approximately 1000 eagle carcasses each year.

 

Since then the number of eagle carcasses received by this facility have greatly increased. The numbers are increasing by several thousand each year and this information will not be released. Yet when this facility was first opened, the FWS freely admitted that wind turbines were a primary source of the repository’s dead eagles. I happen know for a fact that there in no easier way to find an eagle carcass than to visit a wind farm that has been built in eagle habitat. It is also why there are freezers for carcass storage on location.

When I asked a FWS agent about this data, I was told, “I checked with our repository and learned that they don’t keep detailed records of where the eagles they receive come from;”, but she did not care to disclose that the special shipping crates made for eagle carcasses are provided by the USFWS. Nor did she disclose that these crates also have prepaid overnight shipping making this eagle carcass event location data simple to find, IF there were ever any motivation to enforce federal laws that protected these species.

 

Since then over 35000 eagles carcasses have been secretly shipped to this location. This number could even be much higher. So I ask how exactly many eagles killed by turbines have been reported? How many not reported? How many nests have failed because an adult eagle was killed during the nesting cycle? How many nesting territories have been abandoned within 10-20 miles of any wind project placed in eagle habitat? Whatever the truth is, I can guarantee that this industry and our government wildlife officials have been hiding well over 90% of this ongoing eagle slaughter from the public.

 

Now after lying by omission for decades about this ongoing wind turbine eagle slaughter, last Dec. a new rule was passed in America allowing “industry” to kill 7518 bald eagles annually. This new eagle killing rule, allowing thousands of bald eagles to killed annually, was created with fraudulent research as if none of this incredible history of eagle mortality did not exist. Fraudulent research grossly overestimating eagle populations by 10 times or more grossly were also used. I happen to know that this new eagle killing rule was created in part by this industry to cover their butts because I had exposed this industry’s ongoing eagle carcasses fraud. Now this new industry rule can bypass protections and allow the expansion of thousands of turbines into the wetland habitats of America. Sadly, Bald eagles are just a small piece of the ecological disaster.

 

So really, if all if these all eagles are killed with 5 year wind energy permits or 30 years permits, it really doesn’t much matter because there is no real accountability. These eagles have been slaughtered for years without permits, without accountability everybody involved is being chocked with gag orders and are there just so many layers of 1st degree fraud involved with all of this. I will finish by say this………. Without the data from the Repository and without any ethical research, this industry along with the Interior Department, will continue to lie about all this to the public, it makes any mitigation for these poor eagles, a national disgrace

Comment by Jim Wiegand on March 9, 2017 at 1:35pm

Some notable corrections to this article……….. The author stated, “Current estimates put fatal collisions [1] as high as 573,000 birds annually in the United States.” This estimate is not current and is not even close to being true the reasons given below.

First this estimate is far too low because it is outdated by 5 years. This number is based upon 51,630 MW of installed capacity, Today because of wind energy expansion, there is at least 82,171 MW of installed capacity in the US.

Secondly and most importantly I have analyzed the study where this estimate originated. This study used absurd methodology and is completely nonscientific. The image posted clearly exposes this study for what it is, garbage. This easy to understand information has been publicized and it can be found at this site ……… http://www.windtaskforce.org/.../how-many-birds-are...

This fake 573,000 estimate is off by more than ten times and should never be cited unless the bogus methodology used to obtain this figure is used with it. This number was created from a culmination of fake industry studies using a variety of highly deceptive research methodology tricks.

Then using all this false data from the industry’s fake studies, a new culmination mortality estimate was derived using their false data and further reducing industry mortality figures. This was done by primarily accounting for just increases in the tower heights of turbines as if all wind turbines still had 20-foot-long blades.

Spinning turbine blades smash carcasses and send them flying great distances with directional forces. Turbines during high winds and located on steep ridge lines, can send carcasses flying several hundred meters. The industry’s fraudulent research pretends this does not happen.

Back in 1985, the first and only truly scientific wind industry mortality study ever conducted in America, used search areas around 100 ft. tall turbines (including blade tip height) that were 50 meters out from towers. Today’s massive turbines are 4 -5 times taller and their spinning blades are 7-8 times longer, but industry search areas have been proportionally reduced by approximately 90%.

This is not science. It is trickery, rigging and could possibly be thought of as stupidity. But the pattern of terrible wind industry research has taken place for so long and is so pervasive, that any excuses of researcher stupidity, appear to be virtually impossible.

I am not alone with my expert opinion. From Europe, here is a quote from a recent wind energy impact study called “Lack of sound science in assessing wind farm impacts on seabirds.”
“Quite separate from these problems of measurement, estimation and modelling, there is a fundamental logical flaw in the link between scientific assessment and decision- making about the acceptability of wind farm impacts. Modelling approaches have been contrived that seek to define an acceptable threshold for a projected negative impact of a wind farm on seabird populations, below which this negative impact is regarded as causing no adverse effect on site integrity. However, the emperor has no clothes: the thresholds used to define the acceptability of projected offshore wind farm impacts are arbitrary, poorly reasoned, not designed for the purpose and have no valid biological basis. Hence, it is necessary to revise decision-making procedures, regardless of what effect-to-impacts translation procedure is used. At present, inadequate data are being combined with arbitrary and scientifically unsupportable thresholds to argue that wind farms will cause no damage to the integrity of sites designated to restore and maintain Europe’s biodiversity”