By Jim Wiegand — March 2, 2022
“Where are the true environmentalists in this debate? Sierra Club …. Natural Resources Defense Council? The bird groups are even suing on aviation mortality issues.”
America’s green energy push has been going on for decades. It never sleeps. And it is both anti-environmental and corrupt.
I have been writing about industrial wind’s “avian mortality” problem in California for years (see here and here). Particular carnage has been documented by the California Energy Commission at Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area. It has gotten so bad that the National Audubon Society recently filed suit against a proposed 80 MW wind facility there.
With biased research and imaginary population estimates, Big Wind wants to increase its bald eagle “take” in America. The previous limit set in 2016 was 4,200 bald eagles annually; Biden’s Department of Interior proposes to almost quadruple this to 15,832.
Interior states in its recent Federal Register notice:
Although some of the increase in the estimates of population size from 2009 to 2019 can be attributed to improvements in methods, the majority of the increase is likely due to population growth, estimated to be around 10 percent per year.
Improvements in “methods” really means continue to ignore real world conditions like bald eagle habitat abandonment near wind farms. It is all to keep an inferior, crony electricity source in play, one that true ecologists should have rejected at the beginning.
The population of Alaska’s bald eagles near 30,000 is by far the most of any state. Subtract that number from 316,708 and we are supposed to believe that, on average, each of the lower-48 has a population of 5,971 bald eagles. But in California, the bald eagle population is more like one-third this number.
Here in Shasta County, CA we have the highest density of bald eagles in the state. The total population, including juveniles, is about 150.
The Federal Register says there are take permits that allow 490 bald eagles to be killed annually. Yet this industry, in collusion with the Interior Department, secretly ships thousands of eagles every year to the Denver Eagle Repository. These Take permits are a complete fraud on the public.
The population numbers were set in backroom negotiations. Then Interior Department studies were rigged to produce data that would fit into a green narrative. We supposedly now have about 317,000 bald eagles. Not true. The same entities also produced a study that overestimated a golden eagle population in CA by ten-fold or more.
Where are the true environmentalists in this debate? Sierra Club …. Natural Resources Defense Council? The bird groups are even suing on avian mortality issues.
This is not a Joe Biden problem. This is a Washington, DC problem with both Republicans and Democrats responsible. The Federal Register says we have until March 4th to post comments. I’ve been posting factual scientific comments for years, and this eagle-killing industry just keeps on growing.
The wind industry spins bad news into something positive. A close reading of the article below reveals the problem of “the Cuisinarts of the Air” (as coined by the Los Angeles Sierra Club) that Big Wind is in the middle of.
Wind Power Developers Encouraged by Findings on Bald Eagle Population
In the race to generate and distribute renewable energy, developers must clear numerous regulatory hurdles. For many projects, this may include obtaining a voluntary “incidental take” permit under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (BGEPA).
The BGEPA incidental take permitting program has frustrated both developers and operators due to, among other things, uncertainty of costs, timing, and outcomes. Recently, developers choosing to obtain an eagle “incidental take permit” for activities such as wind energy development received some good news—the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) increased its bald eagle population estimates, which should create opportunities for additional wind development, or at least reduced regulation, in areas now deemed to have more bald eagles.
Under FWS’s current legal interpretation—which many legal minds reasonably dispute—BGEPA generally prohibits both intentional and incidental “take” (e.g., the injuring or killing) of bald and golden eagles. According to FWS, take is incidental when it is associated with, but not the purpose of, an activity (i.e., when take is accidental).
Despite these general prohibitions, BGPEA allows businesses to obtain incidental take permits that shield them from liability when they comply with the terms of those permits. These permits may be important for developers to obtain, particularly if projects are sited on federal land or financial backers require these permits as insurance against governmental enforcement demands.
Bird choppers are as fugly as they are useless for actually producing reliable power.
But they are good for bribe collections by politicians and dirty money washing by criminals at least in some of the Balkan countries.
(google: Maltese journalist wind farm )
If there why not elsewhere ?
Greed is an ugly thing.
Greed based on a lie (about human CO2 emissions) is villiany.
Big Wind and Solar (instead of knocking them unconscious, solar burns them alive) are VILE.
Only someone (informed of the facts about wind/solar):
A. without a conscience
and or
B. blinded by greed
could EVER support these monstrous industries.
If properly sited and of modern design, they don’t chop birds.
They generate huge amounts of electricity
No they don’t – the Germans understand that now
Proper siting can slightly reduce the carnage, it can never eliminate it.
When the wind is blowing in the proper amounts, wind mills can produce a lot of power.
The problem is that when there is too much, or too little wind, wind mills produce no power.
The bigger problem is that the previous condition happens about 60% of the time.
The biggest problem is that the 40% of the time when wind mills actually do produce power, that power often isn’t needed.
@Griff
Please Use Your Brain and look at a Map of Solar Irradiation.
https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/83907154436/solar-irradiation-map-of-europe
True believer nonsense. Wind turbines kill wildlife everywhere they’ve been installed.
Typical giffiepoo idiocy, prolifically lying about unreliable wind turbines generating inconsistent intermittent electricity.
Willfully abjectly wrong.
Small fossil fueled or nuclear generating facilities, efficiently and quietly generate far more reliable consistent electricity than vast fields of wind turbines.
Wind farms ruin immense acreages with inefficient noisy deadly wind turbines.
EXCERPT from:
The Interior Department’s Fraudulent Bald Eagle Numbershttps://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-interior-department-s-fraudulent-bald-eagle-numbers
America’s green energy fraud has been going on for decades and as I have discovered, it never sleeps. While everybody’s been watching the Putin show, our sleazy President and our open borders, international financial interests are still working their evil ways on Americans.
The wind industry with fraudulent research and imaginary population estimates, wants to increase green energy’s bald eagle take in America. The previous take limit, that was set in 2016 with fraudulent research, was 4200 bald eagles annually. The Interior Department now wants increase that limit again to 15,832 .
From Federal Register ….”Although some of the increase in the estimates of population size from 2009 to 2019 can be attributed to improvements in methods, the majority of the increase is likely due to population growth, estimated to be around 10 percent per year.”
Improvements in “methods” really means, continue to ignore real world conditions like bald eagle habitat abandonment near wind farms and crank up the rigging for investors.
Not sure if the fake eagle population estimates include Alaska or not but the population of Alaska’s bald eagles is about 30,000. Alaska by leaps and bounds, has more bald eagles than any other state. Subtract that number from 316,708 and we are supposed to believe that on average, each of the lower 48 states has a population of 5,971 bald eagles. In California the bald eagle population doesn’t even come close and we likely have 1000-1500, but no more.
Here in Shasta County, CA, we easily have the highest density of bald eagles in the state and the total population including juveniles and sub-adults, is about 150. Except for occasional migrants, many of California’s 58 counties have no Bald eagles.
I do not need to read the new study or to analyze the methodology used for the recent Bald Eagle population estimates because I know it’s absolute Bull Shit.
The Fish and Game numbers below are from 2016. They report about 300 hundred bald eagles living in CA. Add the sub-adults and you might get another 150-200. Yet the Interior Department’s numbers suggest that the Bald Eagle Population in CA has grown by 10-20 times in size since then.
Good for you fighting against the slaughter of or flying friends, Jim W. I have mentioned several times here at WATTS that I walked along a line of windmills NE of Casper, Wyoming (we had an insitu-leach uranium play underneath) and was actually shocked by the carnage. There were no Bald Eagles, but a Golden Eagle, several hawks, a falcon, and several buzzards, along with lots of common local birds. It is unthinkable that any other industry gets a permit to chop up Bald Eagles, a signal that the Greenies are frauds and fakes and money-grubbers. I encourage anyone on any side of the “renewable” energy issue to walk along a line of windmills, preferably early Monday morning, before the clean-up crew gets there. Outrageous!
“It is unthinkable that any other industry gets a permit to chop up Bald Eagles, a signal that the Greenies are frauds and fakes and money-grubbers.”
Exactly.
I urge the reader to follow the links provided to Mr. Weigand’s three-part series from 2016.
One of the many things that confounded me as I read them, is that there is no way the public can get an accurate count of the number of eagles killed. From his first article:
“Those wanting this eagle mortality information will find that the industry is 17 years ahead of you because this information is now protected by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Obtaining any of this eagle carcass information as it relates to the wind industry ended late in the Clinton administration, when a new FOIA law was enacted on December 1, 1999. Unbelievably, and thanks to the connivance of Clinton officials and members of Congress with the wind industry, the hidden, deceptive slaughter of bald and golden eagles is now treated as a trade secret!”
And the Biden junta now wants to double down (actually quadruple down) on the outrage. I suspect that the industry has already grossly exceeded their “allowance” and wants retroactive protection in case the truth leaks out somehow.
All for an industry that shouldn’t exist, and wouldn’t exist but for the huge subsidies provided by US taxpayers.
Thanks Jim for your follow-up report, and to your dedication to truth, sanity, and the protection of the regal bird which is our National Emblem.
Please do not refer to them as ‘ greenies ‘. This term implies some sort of naughty children.
Ok, I won’t. Btw, I didn’t this time, either. If you read carefully.
I agree with your sentiment, the name does make them seem less sinister.
Developers are looking to install 63 wind turbines in our valley, each at 7MW and standing 280m high. I wonder how the protected Wedge Tailed Eagles that currently nest at the site will fare? And the endangered Barking Owls and Pied Long Eared Bats? Still, they will have to purchase certificates so that will make it OK. Right? And the turbines will provide energy 30% of the time on average. So, even though they require an energy source to start them up and need to be turned off if the wind is too strong, it’s still worth it, isn’t it? Not sure how the Nankeen Kestrels will fare, or the many varieties of parrots that flock there.
It’s always amusing to see fossil fuel shills roll out this tired old trope and pretend to be concerned about the environment.
The reality is that wind turbines are far down the list of bird mortality causes.
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-farms-bird-slayers-theyre-behere.html
Not only that, recent research has shown that simply painting one blade black curtails that number even further.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.6592
So if that’s the case, why paint just one blade black?
Why not paint all of them black, and stop bird slaughter altogether?
Is this another example of the inability of renewables shills to comprehend numbers and logic?
I challenge you to go to the field near wind turbines and see the carnage.
What is always amusing is to watch Barry once again pretend that he actually knows what he is talking about.
As usual, he demands sourced and peer reviewed papers from recognized experts in reputable journals from others.
From himself, any propaganda rag will do so long as it says what he wants to here.
He actually thinks that cats killing song birds is comparable to wind mills killing raptors.
A slight suggestion:
“cats killing abundant prolific song birds is comparable to wind mills killing slow incremental reproducing raptors”
I actually know people who are tagging, tracking, and counting Bald and Golden Eagles. One is so concerned about these birds in south central Wyoming that he thinks just the current number of turbines here, a mere 818 square miles of them permited or operating so far, will do irreparable harm.
Of course, what does he know in your estimation, he’s only been doing this since 1980. You’ve read Phys dot org!
It is always amusing to see warming alarmists attempt to rationalize bird kills by pointing how how bad it is. That is like some kid saying, “Why can’t I do it mommy? Everyone else is doing it!” Some things are just wrong.
Your link addresses all birds, most of which are small and migratory. The greatest losses are night-flying birds attracted by the lights in buildings or tall towers. However, small birds, which are prey animals, compensate by higher reproductive rates than raptors. Raptors have a more precarious hold on existence than their prey. Raptors have higher mortality rates from turbines than the smaller birds.
Even if a Black Blade reduces daytime mortality, it still results in raptor and bat deaths that wouldn’t happen if there were no wind turbines.
And windmills are a blight on the landscape, made worse by the fact that they are not necessary to supply electricity to humanity. They are a choice, a bad choice.
THEY ARE NOT NECESSARY.
THEY ARE NOT NECESSARY.
THEY ARE NOT NECESSARY.
(bore repeating — with emphasis)
They absolutely are, to reduce the CO2 which is causing rapid warming and climate change.
That’s what the science says, those are the facts…
An evidence-free comment, Griff.
Just saying it is so, does not necessarily make it so.
There is no evidence of rapid warming, and there’s no evidence CO2 is causing any rapid warming.
The globe is actually cooling. By about 0.7C since 2016, so where’s your “rapid warming”? You’re just blowing smoke.
Can you cite a study of the analysis of the total lifetime CO2 released in the manufacture, installation, maintenance, and decommissioning of wind turbines versus their reduction in CO2? Don’t forget the CO2 released in making the concrete pads they sit on. That would be science, unlike your unsupported assertions!
Which is it? Warming or climate change?
How do you define rapid?
Your remarks are a joke!
Sounds like you are cereal, griff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h05YfP_8UsU&t=2s&ab_channel=Cr%C3%B6vestheAmazing
😅
How can they reduce fossil fuels, when fossil fuel plants have to be kept running so that they can take over when the wind stops blowing, or blows to hard.
There is no evidence that the world is warming rapidly.
There is no evidence that CO2 is causing more than a tiny percent of the warming that has taken place.
That’s what the data says. Data are facts.
Models are neither data, nor science.
Tom, I couldn’t agree more about them being a blight.
As well as ruining the landscape they are also deadly for trees -almost 14 million trees in Scotland alone being cut down to make way for the blight.
Good point.
According to your reference cats are the leading cause of death, but cats don’t kill geese, ducks, hawks, owls, eagles, vultures, buzzards, or even cat-birds, crows, and ravens as far as I can tell. What tripe.
I don’t really believe the numbers. I’ve owned cats my whole life. They have brought home lots of rodents. However, the only incidence of taking a bird was a hummingbird in my presence. I immediately took it away from the cat and allowed it to recover from the trauma before releasing it. It was unharmed.
Feral cats are another story because they aren’t being fed. However, they are competing in a niche with bob cats, foxes, skunks, raccoons, coyotes, and other medium-size mammal predators. Even squirrels will eat bird eggs and young birds, given a chance. And then, cats can be a meal for many of their competing predators.
https://windmillskill.com/blog/windfarms-kill-10-20-times-more-previously-thought
Excellent site, Mr. Toland. Thank you for that.
“If you have [people] who will exclude
any of God’s creatures
from the shelter of compassion and pity,
you will have [people] who will deal likewise
with [people].”
Francis of Assisi
The wind industry doesn’t care about harm to humans from noise..both audible and sub audible. Why would they care about raptors?
That site uses numbers from Altamont Pass
Dr. Shawn Smallwood’s 2004 study, spanning four years, estimated that California’s Altamont Pass wind “farm” killed an average of 116 Golden Eagles annually. This adds up to 2,900 dead “goldies” since it was built 25 years ago.
but! Altamont is entirely untypical of wind turbines built from the 90s on…
It was uniquely badly sited across a narrow migration corridor, in a area also used by wintering birds, the old style lattice towers encouraged roosting and the actual power lines electrocuted raptors.
Using Altamont figures is entirely unjustified as they are entirely unrepresentative of any site built post 1980s and incorporating non small rotor/lattice tower designs...
Griff, the link that I provided shows that the average European wind turbine kills 500 birds and bats per year which is a lot worse than Altamont Pass. Do you ever actually read and understand the links that other people provide?
In any case, you have only stated the number of golden eagles killed at Altamont Pass and ignored all of the other bird deaths there.
Griff, why do you insist on using an ellipsis to end your posts? I can only assume that you are a victim of “modern” English teachers at school who don’t understand English grammar.
“Estimated”!
Numbers that even the wind turbine farm workers admit are the raptors they didn’t manage to clean up before dead bird estimators arrived to count carcasses!
Large raptors increase their populations incrementally, i.e. very slowly.
The absurdly low “estimated”, as wind turbine killed, by Smallwood is still far too much and reduces a rare bird’s population.
Alleged environmentalists are renewable energy advocates by willful biased paid advocates. Their opinion based estimates are worthless.
Barry Anthony, you began your comment with, “It’s always amusing to see fossil fuel shills roll out this tired old trope and pretend to be concerned about the environment.”
Barry Anthony, I suspect that you’re not from around here, meaning you’re not a U.S. citizen. A couple of questions for you: Are you aware that the Bald Eagle is the “National Emblem” of the United States and has been since the late 18th century, which is the reason for people’s pride in it and their concerns when it is threated? Or are you just a feckin eejit? I suspect it’s a yes answer to the second question.
Regards,
Bob
Barry is rapidly surpassing griff for the number of times he has cited magazine article that doesn’t actually support the point he is trying to make.
And griff has been at it a lot longer.
No matter what the subject, it’s always a fossil fuel shill trope.
It’s like Barry lacks sufficient intelligence to come up with new insults without help.
Now, I’m not a high-educated bird type, but your source says this:
“From this, the author estimated that wind farms killed approximately seven thousand birds in the United States in 2006 but nuclear plants killed about 327,000″
I’m curious. How does a nuclear power plant kill birds? I’m not seeing them spin around, and birds seem quite adept at not running into huge, immobile buildings and structures.
Oh, and you do realize that the evil bird-killing nuclear plants have the lowest greenhouse gas emissions per GWh output, right? So it can’t be that evil CO2 output.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
Lower than wind or solar. And that’s over the entire lifecycle of the source.
It’s those hidden death rays shooting out of the power plants. The ones that only greens can see.
I suspect that if birds really had a hard time avoiding large objects like a cooling tower for a nuclear power station, then we could expect to see birds piled up at the base of mountains — or predators sitting patiently waiting for the next free meal.
“…are far down the list… ”
This reminds me of the argument that what was used to put Texas commercial fishermen out of business, famous paper published in the 1980s Transactions of the American Fisheries Society–they don’t make enough money to impact the economy. New policy based on that and sensitive habitats being used now on some of oyster fishery, will get to that later.
Driving often through the extensive turbines near Corpus Christi I have not seen evidence of dead or even many live birds. Mostly farmland, bare much of the year, lots of cotton, but other crops could attract them for short periods. However, they have extended farther north and east where there may be more birds, now maybe stopped expansion,. One blade did get destroyed by a train in Luling.
HDH,
“near Corpus Christi I have not seen evidence of dead or even many live birds”
Too late. The blades have done their evil.
Geoff S
“The reality is that wind turbines are far down the list of bird mortality causes.“
Hunting is far down the list of mammal causes of death, therefore we should be allowed to shoot endangered species at will. That’s the exact ‘logic’ being used here.
Funny
Using the word logic describing Barry
A bit of contemplation might get you to realize that many places were wind turbines are situated are also ideal for raptors. I can not imagine how raptors can co-exist with wind turbines. Turbines literally destroy their habitat and might be the biggest cause of their decline. [An observation based on observing soaring raptors from the perspective of a para-glider pilot]
Bald eagles is the problem–has been for decades. Barry, why not shut down Altamont Pass?
You can tell when the circus arrives as the clown shows up.
If you’d actually read the paper you refer to you will see the “reason” why fossil fuels bird mortality rate is higher than the direct mortality rate of wind i.e. the blades, is because of the artificial metric “climate change”.
Also, the mortality rate of wind doesn’t include the manufacture of the turbines or the mining of rare earth.
The paper compares apples and oranges and comes up with a pre-determined result in favour of bird choppers.
So the FWS discovers there are many more eagles in Cali than they thought? Well, increasing the number of wind turbines should take care of that problem!
Where are the tribes on this? Lakota,? Nez Pierce? Ute? etc.?
I imagine they are fine with it as the eagle carcasses are sent to the Federal Eagle Depository where their feathers and parts are distributed to the tribes. They’re undoubtedly getting far more eagle bits than they could possibly get by hunting the birds themselves. Wind Turbines = Automatic Eagle Harvesters.
After dealing with Native American tribes on energy issues, where they stand depends on who will pay them the most.
Even possessing a raptor feather lost by a bird is illegal. This, presumably, to discourage people from killing them for their feathers. Yet, killing is sanctioned if one has the right paperwork.
The world is mad!
Mad and proud of it with PR legions and marketing contracts containing paid-online message management services and more.
Don’t you remember about being hung for hunting deer in the king’s forests?
You must have me confused with an old ancestor from the House of Marlboro. I have no such recollection.
Hopefully steel prices will sink the whole wind industry, but then it’s a tax write-off.
Let’s not hope for high steel prices.
The crude oil and nat gas producers use a lot of steel.
As do all of the national economies that are working to lift people out of poverty.
Too late I’m afraid. The IEA say steel prices rose by as much as 100% during 2021.
“With biased research and imaginary population estimates, Big Wind wants to increase its bald eagle “take” in America. The previous limit set in 2016 was 4,200 bald eagles annually; Biden’s Department of Interior proposes to almost quadruple this to 15,832.”
****************
Are they kidding me? If my math is right, the new take number is about a 377% increase, and it comes some decades after bald eagles have made a very nice recovery from their very low count decades ago. Where did they get that new take number from?
As a wildlife lover, the reader will please excuse me if I have a very hard time containing my outrage here. Watching Big Wind doing this in cahoots with the DOI demonstrates how lots of $$$ is involved with here too little concern for avian wildlife. Environmentalists my a**. Eagles are supposed to be protected. Damn hypocrites.
It will be interesting to watch how fast the wind turbine industry dies out if and when this exemption for wind turbines is terminated and fines start getting imposed.
KILL WIND TURBINES, NOT AVIAN WILDLIFE.
But, but, but, cats and windows kill more bald eagles than bird choppers, so it’s ok.
It is time to break Big Wind.
That’s weird: I clicked the “+” sign on both your comments at practically the same time and two votes were put on your second comment, but none on the first. When I clicked the “+” sign again on the first comment, it said I had already voted, yet the count showed “zero”.
When you + or -, it also updates the TOTAL, so if anyone + or – since you opened the article, you get them all.
I have noticed that after opening an article, getting a phone call or call of nature and coming back to the article, especially of a vary good or very bad (griff, Barry Anthony, Simon) comment I will see a large number change upon adding my + or -.
Yes, I’ve seen that happen many times where the count will go up more than one, but I still don’t get why my + vote was not recorded at all on the first comment. The count was zero before I voted, and zero after I voted +.
No big deal, but Bruce deserved that “+” vote. 🙂
Try doing a “-” vote then canceling it with “+”.
Someone ELSE did a – vote before you did the + vote so they cancelled each other out.
Maybe. But the number displayed is the ‘net’ total. i.e., the total of both plus and minus votes.
+2 votes combined with -2 votes = zero!
Brandon is an expert on that subject.
Thanks for making me laugh so hard I squirted hot coffee out my nose (those flavored creamers burn!) Sadly, I’ve been breaking big wind since my doctor put me on Metformin for high sugar.
Aren’t you forgetting about all the state employee pension funds that are invested therein?
Nope, don’t give a rats’ patootie.
Sounds like Washington is getting ‘Putinised’.
Since the bald eagle is a national symbol for the U.S., it follows that the leftist green alarmists don’t mind killing off the population. After all, they think that the weaker the U.S. the better, whether it is just symbolic or not.
There are diverse (number, not color) precedents in secular religions for planned parent/hood to relieve/reduce/recycle “burdens” for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes.
Planned Parenthood is very active in minority areas in the U.S., black, and brown countries. What does that have to do with bald eagles?
None shall pass the wind turbine gauntlet.
That said, laundered, intermittent/renewable, Green environmentalism is a first-order forcing of catastrophic anthropogenic ecological change from recovery to reclamation.
US Fish & Wildlife Service issued a report on March 25, 2021, two months after Joe Biden was sworn in, based upon data collected and analyzed throughout the Trump administration. The report was written in 2020, based upon data collected in 2018-2019 indicating a total bald eagle population of 316,700 as of 2020. This represents a quadrupling of bald eagle populations nationwide from the previous study in 2009.
So you’re telling us that Trump fudged the numbers on bald eagle populations?
Wow, I never knew that Trump was such whore for Big Wind (whatever that is).
What a crock of bullshit.
What an a$$hat. The SWAMP produced those numbers. The same swamp that rose up against TRUMP! for fear of having their jobs eliminated or moved from DC, the native environment for swamp creatures, although apparently at home in their pajamas is probably the most common workplace for DC federal employees now.
Duane, can you confirm that from your own personal experience? If not, just ask ROOTS Psaki when you get your updated talking points tomorrow morning, or do they send them out a night to give you time to memorize them?.
Trump is responsible for everything bad that happened while he was president, whether he had control or not.
Trump is not responsible for anything good that happened while he was president, no matter how big a role he played in making it happen.
I suspect that this tells you that the staff at USFW waited until Trump was gone so they could push their bovine excrement analysis out without fear of backlash from the appointees at the top of the management heap. Remember, it requires more personnel and resources to track endangered and threatened species, conduct studies, issue permits (for which you can collect fees!) than to create a healthy population which will self regulate. It is not in the short or long term interest of the USFW to succeed in restoring wildlife to sustainable levels. Iron Law of Bureaucracy, grow the bureau.
Look, I understand you hate Trump, I never had much use for him either, but suggesting he’s responsible for this report, generated by minions in a massive federal government is just silly
I think Putin manufactures civilian murder statistics with the same software
OK, lets be a Devil’s Avocado and popular as a fart under a duvet…..
Some years ago, the bureaucrats organising one of China’s ‘Great Leaps‘ noticed that their fields of crop, notably arable/cereal crops, were filled with flocks of small birds.
UK-wise, these would be sparrows. finches, tits and robins.
In the eyes of The Bureaucrats, these little birds were stealing the food meant for the people.
Two main problems there, the least of which being possibility of widespread human starvation.
Main problem was that if said bureaucrat didn’t fill his/her quota of food, then off they went to the re-education camp.
So the farmers/peasants/serfs were offered rewards for catching these ‘pest birds’.
The reward scheme was a massive success, vast numbers of little birds were killed and handed in in exchange for $$$
In fact the scheme was soooo successful, entrepreneurs were forced to set up farms especially to breed the little birds – solely so they could be sacrificed on the desks of the bureaucrats.
Unfortunately for the bureaucrats, The Great Leap tuned into A Great Fail when unintended consequences came their way and crop yields plummeted.
It turned out that the little birds were not eating the wheat, corn, barley rice whatever but were eating insect pests that would have otherwise destroyed the crops.
With the little birds gone, the pests had a Great Feast Field Day
My point:
It takes easily 10, 12 or 15 ‘little birds’ per day to feed one of those mega-raptors and keep it aloft.
The don’t run off petrol, kerosene or sugar
Are the raptors, quite effectively, increasing the insecticide use on arable farms across the US?
The main and cheapest insecticides are the Organophosphorus types.
Most notable of their type and The Great Grand Daddy of them all was stuff called Zyklon.
Are you OK with farmers spraying ever more of that stuff on the food you eat?
Is it beyond the limits of possibility that that stuff and the myriad others have anything to do with the 17% (and increasing rapidly) of your population seeing ‘Dementia‘ listed as their primary cause of death?
Visit here – do you or do you not see Parkinson’s Disease perfectly described as symptoms arising from use of all of the compounds listed?
What exactly was the requirement to install A Demented Person as your president – was there really no-one else capable?
Has everyone else been so badly poisoned by the food you eat?
It speaks volumes that when a patently & completely non-demented president was elected, it was he who was required to take a mental skills capacity test.
the more you think about that, the worse it gets
Quickly off the top of your head: What is the difference between ‘derangement‘ and ‘dementia‘?
Now explain everything from the GHGE thro ‘Ukraine’
/end avocado
The December 2016 kill limit of 4200 was also a quadrupling from the previous limit.
The feds and MSM are reporting “soaring” eagle populations …when all that’s happened is they’ve changed the way they count them. Science! Presumably there will be an infinite estimated population as soon as the Greens have driven them extinct.
The Oregon Forest Practices Act which is the volumes of laws regulating logging of timber on private lands in Oregon has the following protections for Bald Eagles: nesting trees, roosting trees, perching trees, foraging trees. Any operation within 1/2 mile of a nesting site requires a formal review and no operation including logging is allowed for a considerable distance from protected trees. A disturbance of the critical trees is a violation subject to significant punishment even if unintentional.
I like eagles and support equal treatment for protection of wildlife. This egregious carve-out for wind machines is a crime.
On a cruise ship to Sitka Alaska, every piling supporting the docks for the fish processing building had an eagle on it.. When the loud noise of the machinery started they all flew to gather the fish scraps dumped out on the water. Probably over 100 bald eagles.
There are bunches of them. Heck, we have 2 breeding pairs within 5 miles of Duck Creek Utah visible from Rt. 14. Most of the water is close to the highway, but I would think there would be other pairs in the forest away from the road.
That in no way means I support bird choppers chopping eagles. Harvesting forests is a net benefit to HUMANITY, bird choppers is a net detriment to humanity. Simple as that.
It would have helped tremendously to understand this incoherent essay by having a few things explained, preferably at the beginning. What is a ‘take’? How is this determined? Why? We are not experts in arcane bureaucratic rules and language.
Since everything is CO2 then CO2 and AGW is responsible for massive increases in eagles.
Amazing
I just did science, send cash, large denominations, no consecutive serial numbers
The biggest risk to Bald Eagles is lead shot in carcasses…
Bald eagles are being poisoned by lead ammo in hunted animals. Could copper bullets be the fix? | Features | timesnews.net
Eagle numbers have been increasing steadily – between 2009 and 2021 alone, their numbers quadrupled to more than 316,000 birds, according to federal figures – but lead shot threatens that growth…
If wind farms were that much of an impact, how come numbers increased?
Altamont was an actual threat to eagles in its old configuration because the site was a narrow migration corridor and eagle wintering area… other windfarms don’t have the same negative factors
If Climate Change was that much of a threat, how come numbers increased?
Where is the evidence for that when the “Eagle numbers have been increasing steadily?” Much, if not most, of that lead came from eating migratory wildfowl such as ducks and geese that carry lead in themselves after being non-fatally wounded, or in their gizzards from scavenging lead at the bottom of wetlands. In the US, lead shot was outlawed years ago, being replaced by steel or bismuth shot. Lead shot was outlawed so long ago that there are no migratory birds alive today that were wounded before the lead shot ban. There is a possible exception to that because I don’t know how well the lead shot ban is enforced in South America. There may be upland game birds such as pheasant and grouse that carry lead shot in them. However, there are fewer hunters today than there were a generation ago, so I can’t imagine the problem has increased.
I suppose that eagles will scavenge if the opportunity presents itself. However, that niche is filled primarily by vultures. Where is the evidence that vultures are being affected. When a hunter field dresses a deer, it is common to leave the guts behind, and are probably eaten primarily by foxes and coyotes. However, no hunter aims for the gut. So, lead in the gut is a rarity.
In summary, the problem is probably related to the intractable problem of lead in the bottoms of wetlands, but doesn’t seem to be impacting either the grit scavenging waterfowl or the raptors that prey on them.
As usual, you demonstrate a naive understanding of the problem, and get your ‘facts’ from poor sources of information. No where in the article you cited was it mentioned what the animals were that were sourcing the lead poisoning.
And I can be thrown in jail for picking up a fallen Bald Eagle feather.
The Environmentalists have turned into money grubbing Envirowhacos.
Someday the eagle will just be a emblem that no one has ever seen in real life.