By Sherri Lange — October 16, 2025
“Wind projects are known to kill eagles, and climate extremists in the Biden admin still greenlit scores of these projects. @Interior is enforcing the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act to ensure that our national bird is not sacrificed for unreliable wind facilities!” ( – Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, X)
The U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, posted a memorandum back in August calling on the agency to ensure compliance with the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, “to ensure that our national bird is not sacrificed for unreliable wind facilities!”
This is a long overdue threat to major wind projects that have been living a lie. After all, it was the Los Angeles director of the Sierra Club who coined the term “Cuisinarts of the Air” to capture the bird-chopping nature of industrial blades to the most treasured/protected birds of prey.
The “avian mortality” problem has a long history. May the new initiative finally (!) get to the bottom of things.
Government Neglect
The Burgum/DOI memorandum is significant given the failure of the Fish and Wildlife Service to act on the documented killing of Golden and Bald Eagles by industrial wind. The dodge of estimating electrocutions from power poles as a “mitigation” strategy in this area (see David Wojick’s analysis, below) is unacceptable.
North American Platform Against Windpower (NA-PAW) keenly awaits the new DOI priority. It is well known that the ability to “mitigate” eagle deaths include a lack of suitable and rigorous testing; incomplete implementation; limited technology; ignored interacting factors; site specific requirements; lack of collaboration. Add: developer-led counting and methodology; use of less bird occupied testing sites; natural flow of natural processes where scavenging replaces/negates counting; massive level obfuscation including reference points to cats and cars and windows.
The actual numbers of kills are completely unknown. ABC (American Bird Conservancy) estimates some years ago (2021 article), 880 bats and 573,000 birds dead. Actual numbers, again years ago, referencing the Spanish Ornithological Society numbers, a valid coordinate to the USA, is between 13 and 31 million annually. Then add electrocution.
In a 2014 study, researchers estimated that 25.5 million birds are killed each year due to collisions with powerlines, and another 5.6 million are killed by electrocutions. Therefore, powerlines built exclusively to connect new wind facilities to the existing energy grid result in additional bird mortalities that should be factored in to the total toll in birds associated with wind energy development.
David Wojick of CFACT (Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow) has penned several succinct assessments of the problem. “Federal regulators concluded that the golden eagle population cannot survive increased kills from human activity,” he noted, “and also determined that wind turbines substantially increase eagle deaths.”
The feds then offered a solution only a bureaucrat could love: Don’t protect the eagles from turbine strikes, but “offset” their deaths by reducing electrocutions from power poles. Government then underestimated the number of power poles that would need to be made “safe” by a factor of as much as 241 and failed to save any meaningful number of eagles. See link for full report. See here for executive summary.
Time for Action
NA-PAW expresses the hope that Secretary Burgum’s request to FWS is diligently applied, that no new wind factory permits are allowed; and retroactive closures of non-compliant wind factories are administered post haste.
Non-compliant yardsticks must be rejected. After-the-fact counts of dead birds and bats (in this case protected species, Golden and Bald Eagles) is not nearly enough. The corollary idea that reducing related power pole deaths can in some way “mitigate” wind turbine deaths is not credible.
NOTE: Mr. Wojick has not had a reply from his numerous emails to FWS.
CONTACTS:
Sherri Lange, CEO North American Platform Against Wind Power, Great Lakes Wind Truth; Vice President Canada, Save the Eagles International” Advisory Board Member, All About Energy
www.na-paw.org www.greatlakeswindtruth.org www.allaboutenergy.org
David Wojick dwojick@craigellachie.us
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to CFACT. As a civil engineer with a Ph.D. in logic and analytic philosophy of science, he brings a unique perspective to complex policy issues. He specializes in science and technology intensive issues, especially in energy and environment. As a cognitive scientist he also does basic research on the structure and dynamics of complex issues and reasoning. This research informs his policy analyses. He has written hundreds of analytical articles. Many recent examples can be found at https://www.cfact.org/author/dwojick/ Often working as a consultant on understanding complex issues, Dr. Wojick’s numerous clients have included think tanks, trade associations, businesses and government agencies. Examples range from CFACT to the Chief of Naval Research and the Energy Department’s Office of Science. He has served on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University and the staff of the Naval Research Laboratory. He is available for confidential consulting, research and writing.
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The actual numbers of kills are completely unknown.
Which opens the door to statistical inference.
Ecologists can build their research following four guiding principles: define a problem, calculate descriptive statistics like mean, variance, and standard deviation, distinguish between signals (ecological processes of interest) and background noise, and translate an ecological model into a formal statistical one. – Why Is Statistics Important In Ecology?
So what do they know about the Golden Eagle?
Based on these data, we can estimate that there are roughly 30,000 golden eagles across the United States. However, golden eagle populations are believed to undergo a roughly 10 year cycle. That said, having only four years of data from the survey years of 2006 to 2009, limits our ability to assess the long-term population trend. – US Fish & Wildlife Service
Estimates for the bald eagle population in the lower 48 states, based on data from 2018 to 2019, total 316,700 individuals, including 71,467 breeding pairs. – US Fish & Wildlife Service
Pick a number…
The last Golden pop estimate was for 2016 with a huge amount of wind built since then. The Biden FWS did not want to know what wind was doing to the eagles. I just saw a statement that the Golden pop in Wyoming has dropped 30% in the last 20 years, a huge hit if true.
Save the eagles; just say no to wind.
That birds of any type are being killed by this equipment should, of course, be highlighted in a very loud voice. But for most of the knuckle-draggers of the urban population, who have been totally brain-washed by the narrative, what good will it do?
The more pressing arguments against this wind and solar nonsense that will get through to the knuckle-draggers is the cost and stupidity of these systems – that they are fantastically demanding on metals and minerals – oh the horror, more mining!! – and they are intermittent unreliable ridiculously expensive fantastically inefficient non-dispatchable short lived pieces of equipment when, once their short operational life is done, it will actually be us and the knuckle-draggers who will have to pay for the clearing up of this nonsense, notwithstanding the cost in between that we pay for in subsidies.
When the brain-washed knuckle-draggers realise how much it’s actually costing them for this debacle . . . we may then get somewhere . . . and maybe even they will then realise the cost to wildlife and the environment, like, the fantastic amount of additional mining that will have to be undertaken if the vision and ideology of this nonsense is to be realised.
On BBC Country file last week they did a bit about the ecological impacts of UK renewables.
Whilst discussing the heinous number of bird deaths from wind turbines, Tom Heap casually batted the concerns away with a comment, thousands of birds are already being killed by climate change. One problem, even if that were true, UK wind Turbines are really killing birds now, but cannot possibly ever make any measurable difference to climate change. All carnage, no gain.
An enthusiast who travelled to the Western Isles to view a rare bird has told of his “dismay” after watching it fly into a wind turbine and die. The white-throated needletail, which breeds in Asia and winters in Australasia, was spotted on Harris.
About 30 birdwatchers travelled to the island to see the unusual visitor, which has only been recorded five times in the UK since 1950.
Yes… The BBC
I posted that story when it was new.
Time flies, unlike dead birds.
Happy to remind you
….killed by climate change……
Hmm around here birds migrate South for the Winter. They seem to have adapted to CC.
bingo!
Seems the bidies adapted to climate change about the last big glacial event and actually, probably well before?
Virtue signaling is not worth the ecological damage.
*wave your hand* “It’s got electrolytes!”
— Idiocracy
Not much different from “scientists say” or “consensus.”
But it’s only a few birds! /sarcasm magnitude 10.
How about some kill stats and daily monitoring and wake up calls to co-opted wildlife nonprofits.
Very eagle kill is reported to FWS but those reports are secret. My report, linked in the article, has a chapter on that secrecy. Many wind projects count and report all raptor deaths for the first two years of operation. A few of those reports have been made public but most are also secret.
They do not want us to know the damage for political reasons. This secrecy may be Court ordered at request of the wind people and if so the Congress should outlaw it.
Last year wifey and I were driving over to Baker’s Patch, heading up the 58 under the giant Tehachapi/Mojave turbines. I was driving, I heard a light gasp from my wife, and looking up I saw a large raptor flick flicking through the blades of one of the turbines. I don’t know if it made it out, my 3 second impression it was confused and didn’t know what to do.
“Wind projects are known to kill eagles, and climate extremists…”
A comment in poor taste given recent events, but was that comma really necessary?
Sorry. I regret clicking “Post Comment” already.
It’s OK; poor taste is applicable here.
When the Audubon society isn’t emphasizing its “Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging” credentials it is advocating for wind, solar and the demise of carbon based fuels.
I didn’t realize this until the local chapter began its own anti-bird crusades. They also do the “mea culpa“-without meaning: “we are sorry we stole your land” acknowledgment before each meeting.
The Audubon bunch and the save the whales groupies, and the tree-huggers are all MIA. Truely sad.
I had to resign from our local chapter of Audubon Society after the parent group declined to weigh in on the killing of birds by windmills.
One will find the wildlife biologists very uncooperative in this regard, as they are hopelessly conflicted. They desire to see the BGEPA (1940) and the MBPA (1916) enforced, but so concerned with “climate change” that they can’t see a middle path.
However, one such conflicted biologist with about 5 decades of experience with eagles particularly has admitted that for golden eagles, in our section of the Central Flyway, turbine blade strikes kill more golden eagles than automobiles, electrocution, and gunshots combined, and possibly 6 times as many as Bald eagles which are the major avian hazard.
Seems like such people need to be confronted with (1) The trillions squandered on wind power and (2) the fact that after all that waste of money, fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions have continued to climb, with only a meaningless 1% decline *of the larger amount* (so still an increase overall) of energy use today vs. the start point of the stupidity of grid connected wind power ramped up.
Oh, and of course two more facts: Industrial wind facilities don’t last very long, and all of the energy inputs into their production come from COAL, OIL AND GAS.
What about this https://www.fws.gov/law/migratory-bird-treaty-act-1918 ?
Just deny the permits it mentions.
Sadly the FWS ruled that the prohibition on killing does not apply to accidental killing such as by wind turbines so no permit is needed. Only the Eagle Protection Act requires permits for wind killing. For eagles the permits are allowed because the FWS falsely claims that as many or more are saved from electrocution. This false claim is what my report linked in the article is about.
Seriously? Useless ‘crats freely inventing wild excuses-with no value except to muddy the water.
Everything about industrial wind factories on-shore and off-shore is……..BAD.
About damned time! And go after the overshore wind assholes, too.
I understand that there are times when we must accept things we don’t agree with for the good of all. That should only take place for things that actually work and never for things based on lies and cheating. Wind and solar don’t work it is a lie to claim they do. Wind and solar can only be justified by lying and cheating about CAGW. I would not agree to losing even one sparrow in support of wind and solar.