By David Wojick
Every operating wind power facility has a US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) permit to kill eagles on an ongoing basis and many do kill eagles. Each permit depends on eagle-kill offset rules which appear to be false. If so then the killing is illegal, a violation of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
The offset is called “compensatory mitigation” which means the wind power facility pays the FWS or their agents to have their eagle killing offset by helping others live someplace else. Compensatory mitigation is used in other regulatory systems where it may actually work. For example under the Clean Water Act you can destroy a wetland if you create an equivalent one someplace else.
The problem is that while it is easy to verify wetland offsets, it is impossible in the eagle case. Moreover it is extremely unlikely that these offsets actually work.
The issue is electrocution. By coincidence the spacing of the wires on the standard power pole is just right for electrocuting eagles. These are the poles that line most roads and many streets in America, delivering power to the myriad homes and businesses along the way. Some eagles occasionally die this way.
The wires on these poles can be restructured in a way avoids electrocuting eagles and this is what wind power compensatory mitigation is paying for. The first problem is there is no way to know how many eagles are not being electrocuted. The deeper problem is there are likely many millions of these poles and the fraction being converted must be very small.
Note that this compensatory mitigation practice has been going on since a least 2016. It is discussed in a FWS report titled “Bald and golden eagles: population demographics and estimation of sustainable take in the United States, 2016 update” found here.
Here is the essence:
“When authorized take (killing) exceeds EMU (Eagle Management Unit) take limits, Service policy is that take must be effectively offset by compensatory mitigation such that there is no net increase in mortality. Currently, the only offsetting mitigation measure the Service has enough information to confidently apply in this manner is retrofitting of power lines to reduce eagle electrocutions….”
and
“Offsetting mitigation is mostly an issue affecting take authorization for golden eagles, as EMU take limits are set at zero requiring all authorized take to be offset.”
(Executive Summary)
In short the number of golden eagles saved has to at least equal the number killed. We do not know what that number is because while the FWS gets eagle kill reports from all wind facilities that data is held secret to keep the industry from public scrutiny. There are published third party estimates placing the number in the hundreds per year but it could be higher.
How the FWS has determined the dollar amount of compensatory mitigation also looks to be a secret as I can find nothing on it. The method is called Resource Equivalency Analysis but searching the FWS site for that just yields a calculation spreadsheet.
How the FWS gets from these dollars to the actual saving of the required number of eagle’s lives is a mystery. I do not see how such an analysis is even possible let alone verifiable. Where is the derivation and justification for this preposterous program with 160,000 MW of secret wind killing supposedly offset annually and 230,000 MW more in line.
That retrofitting some power poles can effectively offset the ongoing and increasing wind turbine slaughter of eagles seems completely unrealistic. Compensatory mitigation looks like a legal loophole designed to help the wind power industry avoid the Eagle Protection Act. The wind power facilities are just buying the indulgence of killing eagles year after year, more every year.
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Fine the f**k out of the subsidy miners, at a level that both shuts them down and causes them to disgorge their profits.
Oh well, c’est la vie. Qu’est sera, sera. Sometimes you gotta break a few eggs.
Breaking or taking wild bird eggs is also illegal
I guess that isn’t going to stop the extreme left either
I guess by the number of downvotes, some people’s sarcasm detectors are broken.
There is a very easy way. /s is all that is needed.
Without that some posts look extremely like the position is avidly held.
If it were “a few eggs,” there would be no tragedy.
I haven’t been able to use it yet, but if someone says “Sometimes you gotta break a few eggs”, as a serious rationalization, the response needs to be:
“Show me the fkn omlett!”
So, with respect to the dead eagles … show me the benefit.
What is a market price of a murder these days in California?
100 grams of fentanyl?
I could maybe agree to sacrifice a few Golden and Bald eagles for something that we really needed and it actually works. We don’t need windmills and they don’t work therefore wind and solar shouldn’t be allowed to kill any eagles.
The Eagle protection act allows the accidental killing of some, just not enough to destabilize the population. The offset program is designed to let wind pass that point but it does not work, a fact the Feds ignore.
So far, and I haven’t looked that hard, I’ve seen that same video of an eagle getting chopped by a wind “Turbine” over and over again. I really don’t have a good idea what the count of dead birds actually is. Withholding the kill data from public scrutiny isn’t helping matters It says I haven’t looked hard enough. And there really are a lot of dead birds I.e., eagles.
“For example under the Clean Water Act you can destroy a wetland if you create an equivalent one someplace else.”
I never had much confidence that a created wetland will really function as expected and it might not even last long before it silts up or is damaged in some way. A wetland exists because of a delicate balance of forces at work. There are many kinds of wetlands- reproducing one is no simple task. I’m not an expert on the topic but I have worked in forests for half a century and seen many wetlands- along rivers, swamps and vernal pools in forests and coastal wetlands.
Agreed which is why I said may work not does work. As a civil engineer my field was groundwater and you are very right. Wetlands are complex structures not easily replicated.
The field has an amusing name — Seepage and drainage.
https://www.cedengineering.com/userfiles/An%20Introduction%20to%20Seepage%20and%20Drainage%20R1.pdf
My specialty was stability of large dams, with thousands of lives at stake, which is why I got interested in uncertainty.
One of my dams was an early NEPA test case so I took an early hit from the greens. They put the US flood control program out of business, now I am returning the favor with wind.
I’m just curious. When you say “groundwater”, you mean in a broader sense?
I’m asking only because I worked in both drinking water and wastewater treatment.
In drinking water, “groundwater” referred to the source water coming from wells and “surface water” was used where the source water was from streams, lakes, dams, etc.
Depends on where you are … the climate.
Where I live it is simply (and simplified as) add water and you will have a wetland.
In my works, I have to be very careful that I do not create something that, 15 years from now, will essentially belong to the Corp or Engineers or will be regulated by the State.
Wokeachusetts regulates wetlands intensely even puddles of water that are not really wetlands by definition, just temporary puddles. I had to deal with the state agencies for half a century. I had to fight them many times and often won.
A quick google for “wind farm eagle deaths alberta ca” brings up some data
to put a bit of color on this subject, such as=======>
https://www.westernwheel.ca/environment-news/criminal-cases-for-killing-eagles-decline-as-wind-turbine-dangers-grow-7012800
from the above piece
“They are rolling over backwards for wind companies,” said Mike Lockhart a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who researches eagles in Wyoming. “I think they are killing a hell of a lot more eagles than they ever anticipated.”
A good article but they do not mention the bogus electrocution offset program without which no permits could have been issued since 2009. It is a well kept secret.
whoops a double..
Very little about wind and solar are ethical or economic. I’ve mentioned before the global warming via CO2 scam reminds me of the “Witch trials in the early modern period”
I can predict the defence position the wind industry will adopt very soon.
They will say studies show the number of eagles being swiped from the sky by their industry is reducing each year. They will make this claim once the majority of eagles had been reduced to such a degree there are very few left to kill.
That is how duplicitous the renewables energy industry is.
The whole eco destroying industry needs to be constrained and closed down. That is the only option if we are to preserve the rare birds we value and rightly do, those slaughtering the birds need to be put before the courts..
As the number of turbines increase each year, the wild life slaughter they are responsible for will just increase in lock step, until the cross over point is upon us. That point is when there are no more rare birds to destroy. That will be the time the wind turbine industry start claiming their mitigation policies to protect birds is working, “just look at our graphs”….
The complete secrecy that surround the slaughter of rare birds is a constant reminder of how big vested interests operate even in a so called free society.
Isn’t it odd that governmnets are not doing research on the cross over point. It couldn’t be because they know that the projected number of turbines far exceeds the cross over point. That would just be a conspiracy theory.
Where are the spotted owl saviors?
The wind power facilities are just buying the indulgence of killing eagles year after year, more every year.
And who, pray tell, ultimately pays the tab for buying the indulgences?
We do but given that the 160,000 MW of wind operating today likely cost well over $200 billion it is a trivial cost to them.
Especially since that cost flows directly to we the deplorables.