Category: bird slaughterers

Between 46 and 64 golden eagles would likely be killed every year by one wind farm

Published on by sunshinehours11 Comment

Between 46 and 64 golden eagles would likely be killed every year by one wind farm

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“Two conservation groups are urging federal regulators to slow down on approval of what would be the nation’s largest wind farm until more efforts are made to mitigate the impact on eagles.

The groups—the American Bird Conservancy and the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance—told the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in a 15-page letter released Wednesday that between 46 and 64 golden eagles would likely be killed every year by the spinning blades of 1,000 wind turbines planned by the Power Company of Wyoming.”

“But a recent Fish and Wildlife Service rule-making exempts wind generators from prosecution for causing eagle deaths for up to 30 years“.

 

SHAMEFUL: Obama to Give Wind Farms 30-Year Pass on Eagle Deaths

Published on by sunshinehours14 Comments

Slaughtering Eagles will soon be legal thanks to Obama.

This is Shameful.

“The Obama administration is about to approve a rule that will ensure the death of golden and bald eagles for the next 30 more years.
Hundreds of thousands of birds die each year flying into the deadly turbine blades atop the soaring towers that compose wind farms.

The rule will give wind farms thirty year permits for the “non purposeful take of eagles-that is where the take is associated with but
not the purpose of, the activity.’’ The take of eagles is also a euphemism for the slaughter of them.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/12/05/Obama-to-Sign-Rule-Allowing-Death-of-Eagles

Wind turbine fatalities approach a level of concern in a raptor population

Published on by sunshinehours1Leave a comment

A paper in the Journal For Nature Conservatism points out that the level of Red Kite deaths at wind turbines in German is very high. They estimate 308 deaths in 2012 out of 9972 individual Red Kites.

With the projected increase in wind turbines, and the fact it is young breeding pairs being killed, the whole population may be threatened.

“Mortality from collisions with increasing numbers of wind turbines is a potential hazard to raptor populations, but the actual effects on a population scale have rarely been studied based on field data. We estimated annual collision numbers for Red Kites Milvus milvus in the German federal state of Brandenburg (29,483 km2). A hierarchical model considering carcass persistence rate, searcher efficiency and the probability that a killed animal falls into a searched area was applied to results of carcass searches at 617 turbines. Collision risk varied significantly with season. The model estimated 308 (95% CrI 159–488) Red Kite fatalities at 3044 turbines operating during 2012, representing 3.1% of the estimated post-breeding population of 9972 individuals. Using the potential biological removal (PBR) method, mortality thresholds of 4.0% were obtained for migratory Red Kite populations. This level of mortality may be reached when turbine numbers increase within a few years. Since wind turbine collisions may affect Red Kites throughout the global range, a more detailed assessment of the actual impacts on populations is needed, especially because the PBR does not account for the predominance of adult birds among the collision victims.”

83,000 Raptor Fatalities at Wind Farms in USA in 2012

Published on by sunshinehours124 Comments

This is just awful. The Wildlife Society estimates 83,000 raptor fatalities at wind farms in the USA for 2012.

“I used national averages from hundreds of carcass placement trials intended to characterize scavenger removal and searcher detection rates, and I relied on patterns of carcass distance from wind turbines to develop an adjustment for variation in maximum search radius around wind turbines mounted on various tower heights. Adjusted fatality rates correlated inversely with wind-turbine size for all raptors as a group across the United States, and for all birds as a group within the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, California. I estimated 888,000 bat and 573,000 bird fatalities/year (including 83,000 raptor fatalities) at 51,630 megawatt (MW) of installed wind-energy capacity in the United States in 2012.”

 

Finally! One Bird Slaughterer Brought To Justice

Published on by sunshinehours114 Comments

FINALLY!

“WASHINGTON (AP) — A major U.S. power company has pleaded guilty to killing eagles and other birds at two Wyoming wind farms and agreed to pay $1 million as part of the first enforcement of environmental laws protecting birds against wind energy facilities.

Until the settlement announced Friday with Duke Energy Corp. and its renewable energy arm, not a single wind energy company had been prosecuted for a death of an eagle or other protected bird — even though each death is a violation of federal law, unless a company has a federal permit. Not a single wind energy facility has obtained a permit.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based company pleaded guilty to killing 14 eagles and 149 other birds at its Top of the World and Campbell Hill wind farms outside Casper, Wyo. All the deaths, which included golden eagles, hawks, blackbirds, wrens and sparrows, occurred from 2009 to 2013.

“Wind energy is not green if it is killing hundreds of thousands of birds,” said George Fenwick, president of the American Bird Conservancy, which supports properly sited wind farms. “The unfortunate reality is that the flagrant violations of the law seen in this case are widespread.””

 

(h/t Tom Nelson)

 

 

 

The Funnel Effect = Mass Insect Mortality at Solar Farms = Migratory Bird Deaths

Published on by sunshinehours17 Comments

Have you heard about the funnel effect?  It appears solar plants can draw in millions of insects and fry them. And then migratory birds drop in to eat the insects and the birds then get fried too.

“USFWS also noted an issue ReWire hasn’t covered before, and we suspect it has something to do with that funnel effect: the mortality of insects. The agency says the Palen solar project may have a serious effect on insects, based on experience at BrightSource’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) site, now nearing completion in San Bernardino County. “Staff with the CEC reported large mortalities of insects killed during flux testing at the ISEGS site,” says USFWS. “[A]mong those documented include migratory monarch butterflies and dragonflies.”

A subsequent passage in the note on insects is an important summary of the relevance of insect mortalities to risk to other wildlife:

The ecological effects of mass insect mortalities have not been investigated
and may lead to greater levels of mortality than have been anticipated. In particular,
concentrations of insects are likely to draw insectivorous and omnivorous migratory
birds, including many raptors, which may increase the risk of bird mortalities.

If you have a facility that both attracts an entire food chain and then poses a risk of mortality or injury to individual animals at any level in that chain, then you’ve created an ecosystem-wide population sink that can metaphorically “funnel” individual animals from a wide stretch of habitat to a single spot where they meet their demise.

http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/commentary/usfws-mysterious-funnel-effect-harming-wildlife-at-unnamed-solar-plant.html

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Says Killing Eagles is OK!

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“SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 27 (UPI) —
A Solano County, Calif., wind farm would be the first renewable energy project in the nation allowed to kill eagles under a federal plan, a U.S. agency said.
Under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal, outlined in a draft environmental report released Thursday, the Shiloh IV Wind Project would be issued a golden eagle take permit for its 3,500-acre plant in the Montezuma Hills, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The plan would allow the company’s 50 wind turbines to kill as many as five golden eagles in a five-year period in exchange for measures to protect the birds, including retrofitting 133 power poles to prevent electrocutions, the Chronicle said.
“The bottom line is a permit will help preserve eagles,” said Scott Flaherty, the deputy assistant regional director of external affairs for the Fish and Wildlife Service.”

http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/upiUPI-20130927-131354-9098

Paraphrasing … They had to kill the Eagles to save them, *

It is a pretty sick world where an agency tasked with preserving Eagles is goving out permits to kill Eagles and turning a blind eye to the Eagles already being electrocuted.

Shilo IV is rated at 102.5 MW , which means it may average 25MW.

 

Did you know you can buy a 100MW gas generator for around 30 million.

 

 

 

Wind Turbines: 39,000,000 Dead Birds and Bats Per Year in USA

Published on by sunshinehours17 Comments

Environmentalists are Evil.

“As Paul Driessen, Mark Duchamp and others have concluded, based on careful bird and bat mortality studies in Spain and Germany, it is highly likely that the 40,000 US wind turbines are killing between 13 and 39 million birds and bats every year – including hundreds of bald and golden eagles, thousands of hawks, falcons, owls and other raptors, and dozens of extremely rare whooping cranes!”

See more at: http://www.masterresource.org/2013/09/hiding-avian-mortality-altamont-pass

 

And when some greenie says that cats kill more birds, ask them how many Raptors “Fluffy” manages to kill.

(h/t Tom Nelson)

 

 

 

 

Wind Farms Above The Law Eagle Killers

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“It happens about once a month here, on the barren foothills of one of America’s green-energy boomtowns: A soaring golden eagle slams into a wind farm’s spinning turbine and falls, mangled and lifeless, to the ground.

Killing these iconic birds is not just an irreplaceable loss for a vulnerable species. It’s also a federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines.

But the administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind-energy company, even those that flout the law repeatedly. Instead, the government is shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret.“

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/ap-impact-wind-farms-pass-eagle-deaths-19173724