By David Wojick
Wyoming’s Golden Eagles are in trouble and need the protection of the Endangered Species Act. That things are going badly for the eagles is no secret, but the Wyoming authorities are ignoring this rapidly growing threat.
Incredibly, Golden Eagle numbers in Wyoming have declined by nearly a third over the past 20 years according to Teton Raptor Center conservation director, Bryan Bedrosian. This precipitous population drop is clearly serious and must be stopped. Wyoming is America’s Golden Eagle population center, so what happens there potentially affects us all.
Bedrosian warned the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission last October that “We have a quarter of the breeding population of golden eagles in the western United States. We host roughly half of the migrants that come down from Alaska and Canada.”
Another important example is “Comments on Environmental Assessment of the Two Rivers Wind Energy Project on behalf of National Audubon Society and the Wyoming Outdoor Council.”
Here is their special warning with respect to wind power development:
“Wyoming is home to the largest breeding population of Golden Eagles in the lower 48 states and provides critical habitat for wintering and migrating individuals; the state contains some of the most valuable areas for long-term conservation in the western United States.”
“Inadequate protections in a Golden Eagle stronghold experiencing high growth in wind development risks the project area becoming a “population sink” (aka: ecological trap) – an area Golden Eagles are strongly attracted to where they experience high mortality, leading to continued population level declines. When year-round breeding eagles experience mortalities, ‘floater’ eagles are likely to be the ones that fill territory vacancies, which themselves also face the same fate, a downward population spiral becomes possible.”
These dire warnings and many others like them have been ignored by the relevant authorities, so it is time to call in the Endangered Species Act.
The Endangered Species Act recognizes two levels of risk to critical populations — endangered and threatened. Endangered means the population is on the verge of extinction. A population is threatened if it is heading for endangered, and Wyoming’s Golden Eagles certainly fit that description.
Once a threatened population is listed, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) identifies the critical habitat that needs to be conserved in order to protect that population. The Audubon Society comments above allude to this long-term conservation of critical habitat.
Development within the critical habitat is allowed, but it is subject to habitat conservation planning coordinated with FWS. This is the kind of planning that Wyoming authorities have ignored.
Of special concern is the so-called Wyoming Wind Wall. This is a 200-mile-long area in Southeast Wyoming where almost continuous wind farm development is presently being proposed by an array of independent developers.
This kind of unplanned, uncoordinated, and reckless industrial development on a massive scale is potentially just the sort of ecological death trap the Audubon Society warns about. Wind power development may have already contributed to the huge Golden Eagle population losses reported by Bedrosian.
The Wyoming authorities have systematically ignored the cumulative impact of massive scale industrial wind power development. Listing the Wyoming population of Golden Eagles as threatened under the Endangered Species Act may be the only way to save them.
Image U.S. Fish & Wildlife Public Domain
Wyoming has been infected by brainwashed blue state transports who will ignore bird kills to save the planet from a fictional crisis. Goldens are magnificent but are being slaughtered on the alter of woke idiocy.
I agree. But it’s not woke, it’s globalist.
Only the woke play the role of useful idiots for the globalists.
Cheyenne has become a suburb of Denver, and Denver in turn has become a diaspora suburb of San Francisco.
Jackson Hole attracted a leftist horde.
This kind of blind, ideological zealotry surely is bordering on insanity!
This is the sort of “insanity” that avoids critical thinking that might threaten the “higher” goals. Such people don’t want to engage with facts, but only uphold ideology.
Climate alarm is clinical psychotic paranoid delusion.
“This kind of blind, ideological zealotry surely is bordering on insanity!”
A large proportion of Democrats, Democrat voters and other far-leftists. !
I contest the word “bordering.” Otherwise spot on.
The problem is quite solvable. The wind farms simply need to stop operating during daylight hours, for the eagles, and at night for the bats. The rest of the time they can operate normally. Obviously, government renewables mandates should be suspended during periods when they can’t operate, and It would be reasonable to remove subsidies for those periods too because there shouldn’t be a subsidy for something that is not allowed. Overall, the disruption to the wind farms would be trivial compared to the overall disruption of Net Zero, so the new wind farm operation schedule can just be accepted as the future normal operation.
I think you would be better off severing those states from the grid so they are forced to cope with their “unreliables” to a 100%…wouldn’t take too much to get them to ditch their wind/solar stupidity for good. Same applies to Conifornia…you don’t want fuel consumption nor refineries on your turf? Fine, you get completely blocked and get none imported. Maybe you can resort to horse carriage if you can, oh wait: methane emissions…so just walk.
But walking also produces methane emissions.
Humans emit CO2 and methane, so eliminate the population while you are at it. /s
And because they get paid for electricity not generated, conveniently called “curtailment,” they would still make money, our money of course. Problem solved!
Time for this one again:
Needs a theme song.
Maybe a reworking of “You are the Wind Beneath my Wings”? “This is the Thing that Sliced my Wings”?
Great start!
This is the Thing that Sliced my Wings
Why kill me to reach Net Zero?
The Climate’s fine, why can’t you see?
I used to fly ‘cause I’m an eagle
But this is the thing that sliced my wings
Can that thing turn in a tornado?
Is its the power all you claimed it’d be?
“Save the Earth” by killings eagles
With these things that sliced my wings?
Or is skimming Green your only dream?
(Best I could do quickly. I didn’t do the whole song.)
You can’t believe the hypocrisy of so-called environmentalists when they ignore the horrendous raptor killing that is happening as a result of these bird mincers.
“mincers?”
Nay. guillotine
Where do the no-more-dams people stand on windmills?
A “take” under the endangered species act can be “taking” a feather from a molt, retaining one unfertilized egg from a fish spawn, or just disturbing one member of a protected species.
I find it totally amazing that wind farms are allowed to engage in wholesale slaughter of these eagles under the ESA. Don’t tell me that protecting them from being killed by power lines has anywhere the same impact. How may golden eagles have you seen roosting on a power line?
Eagles are not presently under EPA. That is what I am proposing.
ESA not EPA.
Wow, I had no idea. I dealt with one species under the ESA, so I thought eagles would be covered.
Thanks!
Natural selection often condemns a species to extinction only to replace it with another species.
Note: Natural selection. Environments naturally changed throughout the planet’s history.
There is nothing natural about WTGs or SVs.
I am clueless why environmentalists are not up in arms about this, especially given the outcry over the Spotted Owl issues years ago. This leads to the conjecture that they have been bought and sold.
They think saving the planet (bogus) is more important than saving the eagles (real). After the 2024 Audubon comments I cite they went silent and now have a webpage extolling wind power.
Awhile back I sent an eagle article to the Conservation Committee chair of a large Arizona Audubon chapter. Got a reply saying he did not want to hear from a (explicatives deleted) climate denier.
The problem is quite solvable. Outlaw lead shot, the leaning cause of eagle deaths.
Lead poisoning is by no means the leading cause. The last public Fed study on this was 2016. The death reports are secret so we have no idea what the cause levels are. There is a recent study saying wind kills have doubled in the last ten years or so.
I talk about the secrecy here:
“Time for the FWS to Stop Wind Power Eagle-Kill Permits”
by David Wojick
http://www.cfact.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Wojick-Eagle-Kill-Report-Final.pdf
Wind power eagles-kill permits are based on the false claim that the kills are being offset by reducing electrocution deaths. This hoax dates from the Obama days.
I don’t think windmill blades are made of lead.
As far as lead shot for hunting, it’s already banned for waterfowl. Some states, including Wyoming, have additional restriction on lead in hunting and fishing.
PS Where in the US is it legal to hunt eagles of any kind, with or without lead shot?
Nowhere but in the 2016 rankings illegal shooting was the leading human cause of death.
Eagles are poisoned from lead in the animals that they eat.
The UK i newspaper carried a small piece on some research by Prof. Johanna Mappes of the University of Helsinki (20th May 2026).
The study used a touchscreen ‘game’ to test how birds responded to turbine blades. If they pecked the screen and avoided the blades they could access a bird feeder.
The researchers found that warning colours – yellow, red, and black combined with the rotation of the blades were clearly more frightening to the birds than other patterns already used such as a single black blade and red stripes.
“White blades, which are the most frequently used pattern around the world, turned out to be the worst option for birds” said Prof Mappes
“This suggests that a relatively simple visual change could reduce bird mortality in connection with wind power”
Examples include using the colours of adders, coral snakes and dart frogs
That addresses the specific problem that is subject of this article.
It does not address the cost, environmental damage, and uselessness of these obscenities for producing the reliable electricity needed.
Question: Birds are not color blind? Answer per Google: No. Better color vision than humans.
Question: Which birds? I have my doubts eagles were part of the test, but the results would be expect similar or the same.
Maybe not since eagles are not colorful. Speaking of which I once saw a study where they looked at birds at frequencies not visible to humans and some birds that look drab to us were very colorful. An interesting topic.
Birds have 4 different color receptors, like all birds, insects, and most reptiles. Most mammals have only two, except for many primate species, like us.
The fourth color they can see I think is in the far blue, maybe UV.
Unfortunately the report did not mention the birds used but like you I doubt any were eagles.
The problem is quite solvable. Clean up road kills before the eagles arrive, and become more road kills.
Road kills are a leading source of eagle deaths.