Lesser prairie chickens in mating dance. (USDA)
Nature Conservancy loses bid to stop project
TULSA, SALT LAKE CITY, WASHINGTON D.C.––Calling concerns about wildlife voiced by The Nature Conservancy “speculative,” District Judge Robert Haney, of Ottawa County, Oklahoma, on November 12, 2014 ordered Osage County to grant a conditional use permit to TradeWind Energy Inc. for the construction of 68 wind turbines on a 9,000-acre tract near the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.
The Haney verdict is unlikely to end opposition to TradeWind’s Mustang Run Wind Project, which The Nature Conservancy argues may jeopardize lesser prairie chickens, among other bird species.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service recently listed lesser prairie chickens as a threatened species, bringing lawsuits against the listing from the attorney generals of North Dakota and Kansas, the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, and the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance.
Mountain of dead birds & bats
While the potential impact of any new development on wildlife will by definition be “speculative” until it is built, a mountain of dead birds, bats, and impact studies have documented reasons for concern about wind power for 33 years. The 4,000-turbine Altamont Pass wind farm in California, opened in 1981, has been found to kill 1,127 federally protected birds of prey per year, including 67 golden eagles. Similar findings have been reported from two early wind farms in Spain. The wind energy industry and the pro-wind power Barack Obama administration argue that improved turbine design and siting have markedly cut wildlife deaths at newer wind farms.
Mexican free-tailed bat. (Texas Parks & Wildlife photo)
Some wind energy companies have reported recent dramatic reductions in harm to wildlife. Pattern Energy, for instance, in September 2014 claimed to have cut bat deaths by 75% at the Spring Valley Wind Farm near Ely, Nevada. Opened in August 2012, the Spring Valley Wind Farm operates 66 turbines, each 425 feet tall, producing electricity equivalent to the energy needs of 40,000 homes.
After 533 Mexican free-tailed bats were recorded killed by the Spring Valley turbines in 2013, three times as many as the federally authorized “allowable take,” Pattern Energy “implemented new ‘cut-in’ speeds for the turbines, increasing the wind speed required to spin them from 7 miles per hour to 11 miles per hour,” the Ely Times reported.
PacifiCorp sues to conceal birdstrike data
But at least one major player in the wind industry does not want the public to see the evidence pertaining to wind turbine effects on bats and birds, whatever that evidence may be. PacifiCorp of Portland, Oregon, a subsidiary of the energy conglomerate Berkshire-Hathaway, on October 17, 2014 asked the U.S. District Court in Utah to grant an injunction preventing the U.S. Department of the Interior from releasing information about birds found dead at the 13 wind farms it operates in at least three states.
PacifiCorp may perceive a substantial economic interest in keeping bird deaths quiet, having paid more than $10.5 million in federal penalties in 2009 for allegedly causing the electrocution 232 eagles along power lines serving its coal-fueled generating stations.
Associated Press sought birdstrike info
Reported Dina Cappiello of Associated Press, “The Obama administration has said it planned to turn over the material” at odds in the current lawsuit, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by AP in March 2013.
Bald eagle. (Beth Clifton photo)
“AP asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for data collected under corporate permits about the companies’ efforts to collect the carcasses of protected bird species, including eagles and migratory birds, found dead at their facilities,” Capiello explained. Energy companies resisted cooperating, but “The government concluded,” wrote Cappiello, “that the industry’s concerns were ‘insufficiently convincing’ to keep the files secret. The information the AP sought was part of a larger investigation into bird and eagle deaths at wind farms and the administration’s reluctance to prosecute” related cases, while promoting greater use of wind power.”
Wind farms rarely fined
Capiello in May 2013 revealed that “The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind farm for killing eagles and other protected bird species, shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret. More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country’s wind farms each year,” Capiello wrote, “including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March 2013 in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin. Each death is federal crime,” potentially a violation of both the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. The Obama administration has used Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, Capiello pointed out, “to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines. No wind energy company has been prosecuted, even those that repeatedly flout the law.” That changed in November 2013, when Duke Energy Renewables of Charlotte, North Carolina, agreed to pay penalities totaling $1 million for killing 14 eagles and 149 other birds at two wind farms in Wyoming. But prosecutions of wind power developers remain rare.
Relaxed regulation
“Wind power,” Capiello reminded, “a pollution-free energy intended to ease global warming, is a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s energy plan. His administration has championed a $1 billion-a-year tax break to the industry that nearly doubled the amount of wind power in his first term.” Meanwhile, the Obama administration has also pushed an amendment to federal regulations that would allow wind energy developers to operate under 30-year “allowable take” permits for killing bald and/or golden eagles, instead of permits which now must be renewed every five years, presumably after review of the permit holders’ efforts to reduce bird kills.
The American Bird Conservancy in June 2014 filed suit against the proposed new rule in federal court in San Jose, California.
Fossil fuel generating kills more birds
(USDA photo)
There are significant disagreements among researchers and major conservation charities about the significance of wind turbine mortality on bird populations. The British-based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Birdlife International argue that well-situated wind farms actually harm birds and bats far less than other electricity sources.
“Several studies have compared the effect of different energy sources on bird mortality overall,” summarized Robin Webster and Freya Roberts for CarbonBrief.org in April 2013.
Beth & Merritt Clifton.
(Geoff Geiger photo)
“One, published earlier this year,” citing markedly more conservative estimates than those published by the Wildlife Society Bulletin, “calculates wind farms killed 20,000 birds died in 2009 in the U.S., while nuclear plants killed about 330,000 and fossil fueled power plants more than 14 million. The research concludes that taken together, fossil-fueled facilities are about 17 times more dangerous per gigawatt hour of electricity produced to birds than wind and nuclear power stations.”
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Sadly, overpopulation is fuelling the energy gluttony, and there is no form of energy that does not have deleterious effects on the earth and other living beings. Sharing to social media. The one “good” thing about this information is that it may serve to educate the cat-hating bird fanatics that cats are NOT responsible for most of the deaths of their precious wild birds — WE are.
Habitat loss is the #1 reason for avian deaths, followed by window strikes. Cats come in third. But, yes. All three reasons are easily “traced” back to humans. Stupid effing, uncompassionate humans.
A considerable body of research, including my own, suggests that the effects of toxic substances, in particular agricultural spraying, kills more birds than window strikes, roadkills, human hunting practices, feeder diseases, and cat predation all combined, and that cat predation is a distant runner-up to all of the foregoing, with the notation that cats frequently finish off birds who are disabled and brought to ground by inhaling or ingesting pesticides, or colliding with windows, getting hit by cars, getting shot or ingesting lead, and/or suffering from disease. Further, both pesticide inhalation/ingestion and disease are major factors in causing roadkills of birds. One surefire indication of an outbreak of the common feeder disease micoplasma gallisepticum, for example, is that blinded birds start getting hit by cars in abnormally high numbers, and feral cats, who normally hunt rodents by night, begin patrolling roadside ditches by day to pick off the wounded and blinded birds. (The same can be observed, but only briefly, where pesticide intoxication has hit birds hard–because under those circumstances, cats soon die from secondary poisoning, a phenomenon I documented more than 30 years ago in rural Quebec, with the help of Agriculture Canada scientist Judith Hollibone, and described in the May 1987 edition of Cat Fancy.)
Wind is such a scam
They all refuse to give up meat
And name meat industry as evil
And the cause of emissions
RE: “The British-based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Birdlife International argue that well-situated wind farms actually harm birds and bats far less than other electricity sources.” THE TRUTH IS THESE INSTALLATIONS ARE NOT BEING SITED PROPERLY; they are being sited with impunity and complete disregard for major migratory routes and nest eagles in Huron County, MI. I’m certain this is true throughout the land. Monica Essenmacher, Port Crescent Hawk Watch
I have been in renewable energy for over a decade. I can tell you that the problem is often an issue of siting. Often it is for reasons of production, sometimes it is land cost, availability or ease of regulations. Sometimes it is simply stupidity and thoughtless. There are several big companies that do everything to mitigate this, they are mostly AMerican or German based. Others are not too concerned. Most of these developers do not come from the environmentalist side, they are business people, investors, and contractors. They all believe in what they are doing, but never forget this is a capitalist venture, which comes with the attitude of profit first, all else second.
But- the reason people will actually say things like “blow me” and get irritated or angry, is because so many renewable projects are seriously hindered by NIMBYism, and ecological regulations that seem onerous, especially when compared to the devastation that will be worldwide if we do not do something about our means of producing power. Often people in wind/solar see themselves as trying to fight the good fight to save ALL species, even if it means destroying a local area. I don’t know anyone that likes this, or would not be willing to try to change it, but overall it’s a thought process that privileges long term benefit over a larger area to a smaller area.
This has happened especially in California with large solar installations in the desert. People (rightly) object because of the fragile ecosystem, and solar developers say “Well where the F*** do you suggest we put these projects? You have refused EVERY site we have proposed elsewhere!” And indeed, this true to a large extent. SO many of the sites we pick have a group hell bent of getting rid of the project, all while crying for more clean power! The only projects that do not have a myriad of objections are ones on superfund sites and landfills (a great location for these projects, but comes with its own mess of regulation). Thankfully, we do get enough cooperation, and demand, that many jobs do get put up, but the amount of investment in green power thats lost over siting issues due to ecology is immense. Even with the enormous growth in the large scale RE sector.
It gets frustrating on a daily level, especially when we look at the damage of coal, or worse, tar sands. Not an excuse, just an explanation.
It does not have to be this way! There ARE solutions that mitigate much of this harm, but often it is not readily available to a project developer unless they are passionate about searching for it, or are pressured into it. This is where animal and eco advocates can really help. The info is often used when its available, as few people actually don’t give a crap once they are aware. Forcing actual solutions without killing the project goes a long way, and just being willing to work on it with developers can really help- IF they care (or are pushed- rules matter!)
Green power should not destroy the ecology, I am just explaining why it can be this way, and why anger bubbles up in odd places.
I’ve been in the industry as well for quite a few years. There ARE alternatives but industry doesn’t want to pay for them. Ivanpah was built without regard to the birds, bats, and migrating mammals. Now they’ve even invented a name for the birds and bats who are burned up alive as they fly over: streamers. I see a lot of environmental impact statements and comments from public meetings but they’re ultimately all ignored.
Horrible when there is a solution and they refuse to do it over a few dollars, which is all that it is when you are looking at the overall cost of these systems. It’s a capitalist enterprise, not an altruistic one, which is why regulations are needed.
Are you in wind? I am not, but I am in solar.
Merritt- sorry for the derail. I wanted to reply about quitting meat as a solution to our issues with destruction of ecological systems and need for power consumption. You do not have to post it.
As for vegetarianism or veganism as the solution, that is based on bad information. Agriculture is the single most destructive thing on earth, and is the biggest cause for worldwide ecological disaster and killing of all species from pants to bacteria, to soil, to animals. A diet heavy on grains, and other agricultural products, and such is dependent on it. The horror of factory farming (CAFO) comes directly from the push for large quantities for grain production, and was started and sustained by the glut of cheap corn (which is not even suitable food for animals!)
A better solution is to live INSIDE the circle of life, as partners and stewards with our animal friends, and the living soil and plants that sustain us all. We all eat each other, and plants are included in this, they are alive,and fight back against us eating them with chemicals and other adaptations! We make a mess of the earth when we remove ourselves from this circle of life. We could easily turn the center of the country back into a prairie, and let bison and cattle roam free, for us to eat. This is a more efficient use of plant material and is easier on the earth by FAR.
There are permaculture farms that can allow one a life of vegetarianism without ethical issues, but they do have to have animals, whether or not you eat them. Keeping an ecosystem as close to nature as possible is the key, and large, roving, land mammals are a part of this, and have served as nutrition for humans for millions of years without killing the planet like we are now. You do not have to support the nightmare of CAFO, and the environmental disaster of intensive heavy grain production for feed to be a carnivore. Other options exist.
If you are open to new ideas, and not hostile to anything different, check out “The Vegetarian Myth” By Lierre Keith of Deep Green Resistance. She was a vegan for 20 years, and explains this concept well. I disagree with her love of Weston Price, but the ideas about agriculture and the circle of life are important to ecological survival IMO.
And YES, overpopulation is a huge issue. We are drawing down our reserves already, first the soil, and now fossil fuels used to grow mass amounts of grains, which are wasted on, and horrible for, cows. Her idea is to institute world wide access to reading and education for women, along with the ability for them to manage their fertility. There is much evidence that women will choose to have fewer kids, often not even replacement level, even none. This is the most humane way to solve this problem, and is wonderful for women worldwide. Starvation, murder, war, these are inferior to simply having less people by choice, and the empowerment of women can make this happen in only a few generations.
Reality is that a plant-based diet requires only from 20% to 50% as much land to produce as a diet including meat, depending on what plants and what meat one eats. That, in turn, means that potentially 50% to 80% of the ecological effects of agriculture could be avoided if humans switched to a plant-based diet. Of course the effects on wildlife per acre would be about the same, but since so much less land would be used, vastly fewer wild animals would be displaced, and none of the suffering and pollution associated with raising animals to eat would occur.
I urge everyone to watch Cowspiracy. It is well researched and contains reliable information that verifies that the food industry is responsible for the majority of climate change, including California’s drought.
This is because we are feeding them all grains, which is ridiculous, requires a ton of land, and is harmful to all involved. Then, we cram them into intensive spaces, and this makes added eco damage.
It does NOT have to be this way.