By David Wojick
Imagine there is an industry product that is killing thousands a year and the number is growing. The government is tracking it closely, while keeping the data secret in order to protect the product. Outrageous, right? But that is exactly the case with wind power killing eagles.
Every wind-killed eagle found at an industrial wind site is quickly reported to the federal Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Every year each site also submits an annual kill report to FWS. None of this data is publicly available.
The FWS eagle kill data is all a big government secret designed to protect the wind industry from public outrage. This has to stop.
The public has a right to know about all these eagle kills. In addition, this data would support research on ways to reduce the killing. For example, it has been suggested that painting the blades black would help the eagles avoid the blades. In fact, there are a lot of technologies that could be studied given comprehensive kill data.
It is no secret where all this kill data is. It is all in one big FWS database called the Injury and Mortality Reporting System (IMR), but all you can do is enter your kill data. You cannot look at anyone else’s data such as all the kills in a given wind facility or group of facilities.
Important wind facility groups might include those using a given technology, or in a specific county or congressional district. There are lots of analyses that might be important, but only FWS can see all this data. It is a government secret.
Another approach should be to ask for specific kill data, but that does not work either. For example, the Wyoming based Albany County Conservancy (ACC) sent FWS a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request for some very specific kill data from four wind projects.
When the response finally came, FWS said ACC could only see 256 pages or 22% of the 1156 pages that corresponded to their query. The other 910 pages were secret. The available 22% did not begin to answer their questions. The wind-kill data is simply secret.
In addition, every wind site has a permit to kill up to a specified number of eagles a year before preventive action must be taken. None of this data is publicly available either. There is not even a public map or list of permitted facilities that I can find, much less permit data available for analysis.
Ultimately, there is no way to see how many kills are being allowed on a local or regional basis, or to analyze these kill allowances for impact. The national numbers may be in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
Nor is the method used by FWS to calculate these kill allowances available for analysis as far as I can tell. They may be allowing too much killing. I can find no published research on this topic.
There is another point of interest in the kill permits. The FWS permit conditions state that the kill reports only have to find about a third of the actual kills.
Here is the standard permit language: “(1) Fatality Searches. (a) You must achieve an average annual site-wide probability of detection (accounting for spatial and temporal coverage, as well as potential scavenging or detection bias) of at least 35% for every Five-Year period during the permit tenure.”
At this 35% detection rate, the actual kills would be roughly three times those found! So they know the report numbers are way low. It is built in. Any research or findings based on the kill reports needs to take this likely low ball error into account. If a facility says 30 eagles were killed, it is fair to assume it was more like 90.
Wind power is killing a lot of eagles. The federal government is tracking this destruction, but it is all a big secret. We have a right to know what is happening to our eagles.
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Sounds like a job for DOGE.
Seems there is more government concern for illegals than American eagles.
Well said! Protect illegals, kill the eagles.
Lee Zeldin is the guy who should find and expose this data.
If in line with what is stated in the text, he could use it to shut down all wind industrial estates.
Trump has named Brian Nesvik to head the FWS. I think he is not yet confirmed by the Senate, but once he is maybe the data will be made public. He’s currently director of Wyoming’s Fish and Wildlife Department.
He has authority over FWS. He should be made Sec of Interior as Burgum has not done anything.
Lee Zeldin.. Environment Protection Agency.
Wind turbine industrial estates destroy the environment, where-ever they are installed.
The environment need protecting from wind turbines.
Does anyone think the wind farms report an accurate count? The fish and wild life should do the survey and reporting as well as the data base.
Air and water emissions data from every plant large enough to have a permit (almost all of them) have to submit reporting data in accordance with their permits. That data is publicly available, mostly online. Watchdog enviro NGOs mine this data continually. Why are wind turbines not subject to the same scrutiny? Something to hide with collusion from enviro government officials?
Great point! Thanks I can use this.
I worked as a Startup Engineer at five different Nuclear Power Plants years ago. Every one was paying “Environmental Engineers” or local college professors to survey the area around the cooling towers to find and count the dead birds – WEEKLY. Don’t know if they are still doing it. Was a tactic by activists to increase the cost of electricity.
Before the US reaches Net Zero the National Bird will be a Taxidermy bald Eagle.
Remove all wind and solar from the grid, remove all government money from solar and wind operations. Problem solved.
Audubon Society disagrees.
“In order to conserve our birds and protect our birds, we have to have wind energy,” says Garry George, Audubon’s senior director of climate strategy.”
https://www.audubon.org/magazine/surprisingly-simple-solution-protect-birds-wind-turbines-gets-its-biggest-test-yet
“Garry George, Audubon’s senior director of climate strategy.”
Fully imbibed of the Kooky Klimate Kool-aid….
His comment is based on the ignorant supposition that CO2 is causing warming and/or other problems.
Preaches the need to “decarbonise”.. ie a climate idiot !
No-one has ever been able to show pictures of birds killed by coal fired power stations.
Garry George appears to be completely divorced from reality.
Not sure why you’re getting dislikes for calling out a lying moron l looking out for a paycheck. One Executive Order required. Please someone send this thread to people who care about American Eagles, Golden Eagles and all the raptors and other birds that appear to be irrelevant to the Audubon Society and other assorted parasites.
Senior director of climate strategy. That position needs to be Doged!! Now.
if it were a government funded position of course.
I sometimes go to a local Audubon presentation but do not pay dues or have my name associated with the organization. The leaders have the ClimateCult™ virus. If 10% of the money going to the “climate crisis” had been used on habitat protection and rehabilitation the birds, and us, would be substantially better.
From the Audubon website:
“Mobilizing our network—from state directors and highly active chapter members throughout the country, to the tens of thousands of online activists—to advocate for our core policy areas is a critical component of any Audubon policy effort. Audubon’s national policy staff, based in Washington, D.C., has the expertise to leverage the nuances of legislative strategy, the ability to manage relationships with key players in Congress and in federal conservation agencies, and the strength to mobilize Audubon’s assets in the field all in service of our core policy and conservation goals.
Yuh, but when one wind company wanted to build one of their “farms” next to a MA Audubon site in western MA, Audubon fought them and stopped them. This was several years ago.
Somebody tell Trump administration that the keepers of the electric windmill data are preventing the public from accessing the federal data on windmills killing eagles. He will fire them all.
Two words whose increased use annoys me in my old age are “must” and “need” as in “you must” and “you need”.
Discussion and mutual agreement between parties used to be better.
While not eagles, I discovered this week that the agreement with my banker made 20 years ago now includes “You must not reveal your security code to any person, including your family, friends and relatives.” There was no security code back then, it has crept in. Why not browse the fine print of your own bank contract before it is used against you? Geoff S
And yet people still go to jail for having eagle feathers.
There is a fair amount of money invested in subsidy mining, so the bureaucrats will protect the investors in Green Prayer Wheels. Who, of course, make political donations.
Interesting. Disturbing, too, that it is secret. Also, are there reporting requirements for other birds, especially for raptors like hawks?
Great question, David, so we have a homework task.
I bet there are federally required reports for migratory waterfowl birds, huh?
Off to the library now!
Gums sends…
Alas no. FWS ruled that the Migratory Bird Protection Act does not require permitting or reporting for “incidental” (systematically accidental) kills, while the Eagle Protection Act clearly does. Some wind sites voluntarily do 2 year startup kill counts for all birds but it is just here and there so scientifically useless.
Thank you for your answer.
David – Hope this comment doesnt come across as pro – renewable wind. I am in agreement with you along the Russ S and Willis E on all renewable energy topics.
I am under the impression that eagles primary food is fish and therefore eagle population where wind turbines are located is relatively low, thus there should not be high eagle kill.
I could be wrong, so let me know
thanks
Not only are they “our eagles,” it is “our data.” We, the People are the sovereign; our mentally handicapped interns in Washington work for us.
It seems like a cleaver high school or college student or any interested party with serious AI analysis skills could install a camera near one or more of these windmills, let AI watch all the action and identify, record and report all the bird strikes.
If there’s no problem with bird strikes, let the cameras prove it.
“cleaver high school”
cleavers should most definitely be kept out of high school ! 🙂 😉
What about Beaver Cleavers!?
Interesting idea but one camera might not do it. Blade length (bird strike circle radius) on a typical 3 MW turbine runs 165 to 220 feet so the strike circle is big. Plus turbines up to 6 MW are coming.
But it beats the heck out of people searching for bodies from time to time. If an eagle got hit squarely by a blade going upward at 100 to 200 mph (200 is the 3 MW tip speed) the body could be thrown a long way in brushy country.
I have a note from Offshore wind biz in Oct 2024 saying that Dongfang Electric Corporation in China produced a nacelle for a 26MW offshore wind farm with a rotor diameter of 310 metres. Diameters of 260m plus are common. A rotor diameter of 260 metres has a swept area of 53,000 sq metres.
Unfortunately didn’t note the exact reference – sorry.
Fox News Channel lately has been showing an Eagles nest and there are two young eagles in the nest, that are fawned over every time they are shown.
I wonder how close they are to windmills?
There is a distance rule for nests (if they preceded the windmill) but I do not recall it.
There were 3 little ones. A snow storm (apparently) finished one off. Search for:
web cam eagles bear lake
LSU Vet school takes care of these. Also one nesting this year on the central Texas coast where one had been absent for some years. More eagles would mean more morality so what is the population census? Wonder what happened here?
https://www.louisianafirstnews.com/news/local-news/students-community-witness-return-of-bald-eagle-to-its-natural-habitat-at-lsu/
“The eagle’s injury occurred in the metacarpus, a part of the wing similar to a human hand.”
The Feds have been keeping a close watch on eagles here in MT for decades.
I first started watching the annual migration back in the early 80’s. The Lake McDonald
Lodge in Glacier Park has hosted an eagle watching event that is heavily attended in November.
The fall run of Kokanee salmon is well known to attract eagles in the park and down
where I live near the Missouri River. I have photos taken from a blind on McDonald\
Creek of several dozen eagles roosting in a tree, it looks like a decorated Christmas
tree. But since the wind towers were built the decline of eagles during the fall migration
has sharply declined. I have a few that roost on my place along the creeks that nest
a couple of miles downstream but it’s now just a single pair with one juvenile. It’s not just Bald
Eagles, its Golden Eagles and in the winter Gryfalcons from the arctic and several other types of raptors. It’s so curious how the green blob has so many lawsuits over Grizzly Bears
and Wolves when it suits them but nothing regarding these wind towers and the
impact they have on wildlife especially Eagles.
The Goldens are especially threatened as the population is small and declining. MT is in the FWS region where wind studies have found the Golden to have the highest kill rate among the raptors. Very serious.
The scale of this situation is high IMO. I know a family with towers on
their property up on the highline and they’re very tight lipped on this subject which actually says a lot indirectly. The make a good bit of cash and
maintain the roads ect.
The potential stakes by the tower company’s are high one would think.
Once the MIC has overthrown the Russian crime gang they are battling in the Ukraine, one of the treasures they can plunder from the vanquished foe might be some breeding pairs of Stellar sea eagles! It is the heaviest eagle in the world, but seems to be having trouble making inroads into North America; presumably due to the current rabid bias against all things Russian.
As far as justice for our fine feathered friends, I’m in favor of the CEOs and top execs responsible for this madness receiving treatment similar to that which these eagles suffer; smashing or amputating a limb with a fast-moving dull blade seems apropos, although I wouldn’t balk at impalement for repeat offenders! Obviously I’m reading too much Old Testament!
This fundamental feature of all large wind turbines, i.e. the destruction of large birds of prey is well known but a hidden detail. The scale of secrecy surrounding the facts and the uncomfortable details hidden by the wind turbine industry must be brought into the public domain and form part of the planning decision when allowing construction of new developments or not.
Here in the UK we have the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The RSPB, it enjoys royal patronage of the sovereign. The current King Charles took over the role from his late mother Queen Elizabeth.
That such an august body is silent on the devastation of rare birds on the blades of these modern avian killing machines is a disgrace.
Within the rules of the RSPB are details about vested interests of council members and members. The time has surely arrived when the RSPB are asked if any of their council or members have any of these avian destroying machines on their lands or on any of the 320,000 acres of RSPB land?
Thanks David. There is similar raptor tragedy in Australia. As someone who has been logging all local bird species for the last 30-odd years I used to record various eagles on a daily basis but in the last couple of years they have dropped to a once-a-month occurrence or even longer.
“The FWS eagle kill data is all a big government secret..”
I wonder what their excuse is to hide this data? Other than the wind industry wants it secret. There must be some way to force that agency to give the data- some legal action?
I guess the Feds have lyin Eyes
A great example of why Donald Trump is President.
I know there are laws concerning cruelty to animals (specifically pets and domesticated animals).
The question is: Do those laws apply to wildlife, and especially to birds and bats?