Memorial to Eagles
In August 2011, the Department announced it was charging seven oil companies operating in North Dakota with violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act for killing a total of — brace yourself — 28 birds. Furthermore, none of the bird species were uncommon or declining, as opposed to the bald and golden eagles, as well as many of the other species of hawks and owls that are regularly killed by wind turbines. DOJ dismissed charges against one company, and fortunately sanity prevailed for the other six. The judge dismissed the charges against the three that went to court and rejected plea agreements made by the other three.
Over the past several decades the Justice Department “has prosecuted hundreds of cases” against companies in the gas, oil, and electrical generation industries, according to Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute. However, the Department, under both Democratic and Republican administrations (who says bipartisanship is dead?), has never indicted a wind farm company for killing birds. So the message from the federal government is clear. If you’re generating “green” energy, you get a green light to kill as many eagles and other birds as you want. But if you’re producing carbon-based energy and happen to kill a few birds accidentally, then the feds will come down on you with an iron fist.
Across America, many bird species are coming under increasing pressure from a wide variety of threats. Uncommon species, like the bald eagle, and declining species, including those protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, will be especially hard hit by the growing number of wind farms. While our national bird and other species need our respect and help, the government agency that is supposed to protect them is abetting their slaughter
Where is the spotted owl lobby when we need it? In the late 1950s, my major professor in biology called it the US Fish and Wildflower Service. He held the URFWS in low esteem.
I heard it was the US Fish and Wildlife Circus
Not only do these fool things kill eagles and other birds, make noise for people who live near them and regularly shake themselves to pieces from lack of maintenance, they aren’t even efficient enough to have replaced a single coal-burning power plant.
http://www.masterresource.org/2012/01/turned-against-windpower/
Those magnificent winged creatures, the very symbol of our path to the right side of history, the glorious height of development of consciousness for the envir …
… uh … oh, cr*p … this column’s about eagles.
Never mind.
Where is PETA when you need them?
Only if they can figure out a campaign that involves a half naked supermodel/celebrity dressed as a bald eagle.
The enviromental movement is not about the the enviroment.
It is about the leftist aquisition of power.
I hate wind turbines. I live in the Laurel Highlands of PA… A Spanish company builds them 2 miles from my house, and our beautiful mountains are littered with them…hate them, hate them, hate them… Oh my electric bill hasn’t deceased 1 penny….HATE THEM
Wind turbines the ugliest things ever created by man, and they don’t make a hill of difference in producing power.
I guess it’s wrong to kill eagles with DDT, which might save lives by eliminating malaria-carrying mosquitos, but it’s OK to kill eagles with wind turbines which…according to rumor…might do something useful…I guess.
The good news: The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act prohibits anyone, without a permit, from “taking” bald or golden eagles, including their parts, nests, or eggs, where: Take means pursue, shoot, shoot at, poison, wound, kill, capture, trap, collect, destroy, molest, or disturb.
The bad news: Apparently, “puree” is not prohibited.
The other news: The Obama administration publishes a new food pyramid. Bird smoothie, anyone?
I believe the obama admin either plans to/or already has lifted that ban.
What the hell he eats dog. duh?
We have exactly the same hypocrisy in the UK, where the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds announced, not so long ago and in defiance of all the evidence, that wind turbines don’t kill birds. I think the RSPB twisted the narrative into one about songbirds, which nest and feed pretty close to the ground and are more likely to be killed by cats. Ornithologists have been trying very hard, for at least two decades now, to re-introduce the White-tailed Sea Eagle into Britain and they have met with some success.
Now, however, some of the same people who wanted to see Sea Eagles back in Scotland, people who would happily prosecute landowners for the slightest hint of any disturbance of any Sea Eagle nesting-site, these people are blithely pretending that wind-turbines have no impact on the birds for which they purport to care so much.
It’s the same as the palm-oil scandal, really. In Costa Rica (a pretty small country, even from the perspective of somebody from the UK, but a country with a fabulous natural history), I have seen where many acres of natural habitats have been ripped out and replaced with palm trees, for producing palm-oil. For some reason, the greenies labelled palm-oil a Good Thing. Not entirely surprisingly, not many species of wildlife benefit from the process of converting rain-forest into palm-oil plantations. Oddly enough, among the few that do are rats and mice, which always proliferate close to human activity, and fer-de-lance pit-vipers, since their population numbers rise in proportion to those of the rodents.
So support the RSPB and save the rats and the pit-vipers. And b*gg*r the boring old birds.
It seems the Obama Administration blind adherence to green ideology is not just limited to destroying the American People.
But hey, it’s change…
Once upon a time there was ONE known Jaguar in the United States. Guess how captured it to “study” it. It is dead and now there are none in the UNited States.
What this administration is saying its OK to kill – as long as you do it in a politically correct manner. Just like they’re going to kill off older Americans by withholding critical care – if they get their way next month after the Supremes release their decision on the Affordable Care Act.
Proving that life really doesn’t have any meaning – human nor animal – unless its one of ‘them’.
The Democrats want to spend $1 + billion in buying more land protected by feds for conservation, but it’s ok to kill golden eagles?? What a bunch of friggin’ IDIOTS!
Kill the eagles same the smelt
Dozens of eagles killed anually at one location is no joke. Project that out nationally as wind turbines sprout like weeds and it’s far worse (in reality) than poaching is or ever was. But thanks to the waiver nobody will care or do anything.
So the unendangered eagles will quietly be disappeared in huge bird blenders. A glorious result, comrade.
It breaks my heart to know that unendangered eagles will probably soon be as rare as dinosaurs. Future generations will only have pictures of these magnificent birds. Why are we buying more land to be protected by the feds for conservation and not protecting the wildlife there? This is a travesty!!
If wind turbines kill endangered species, prosecute the owners to the fullest extent of the law, or do away with the endangered species list, if it is fungible as to a different agenda.
This has been known for decades among engineers who site wind turbines. The same geological characteristics which channel wind, are instinctively known to birds. These fly ways are killing fields for animals who have no fear or understanding of turbine blades.
Without these exemptions, wind energy has no significant market. More than legal protection however, the industry, and the government stand convicted as environmental liars. The reason d’etre, clean green energy, is a lie.
My response, like many old engineers, has been to advise bright young people to avoid any energy engineering technology. Thousands, tens of thousands, of engineers have been laid off due to this political disease, environmentalism. Would you advise a bright teen to learn coal handling and transport, spent fuel reprocessing, or low speed turbine blade aerodynamics? If you err, they will lose their entire career and livelihood. This is not conjecture; it is history.
I mourn this far more than dead birds.
Only the stupid birds get killed.
The smart ones AVOID the blades and produce smart offspring who do likewise.
It’s even worse with bats. At least with the birds they have to actually fly into the blades to get killed. But bats can be killed by just flying within the vicinity of a wind turbine. A negative pressure wave swirls off the tips of the turbine blade which creates a pressure differential great enough to rupture the bats lungs and they die of suffocation.
There is a documentary call ‘Windfall’ that goes all into a town’s struggle to fend off the wind power companies from building turbines over their houses. The wind power companies come in and pit one neighbor against another by striking individual deals with people. They force people to sign non-disclosure agreements if they decide to take the money for the lease of their land. At first everybody is like, “Oh, the idea of creating energy from the wind is so romantic.” That is until they actually go and stand next to one of these massive 400 foot tall turbines and hear the enormous swooshing noise that they produce (to put in perspective a 747 jumbo jet is 293 feet long). And then they realize that this isn’t just some kitschy little Dutch windmill but a serious piece of industrial equipment. The wind power companies will say they are going to build 40-50 turbines but then they just keep putting them up until they number 150-200. And the stupidest part is that the turbines actually pull a good deal of power off the grid to power heaters in the turbine blades so that they don’t fling ice a mile through the air. Electricity is also needed to keep the turbine nacelle pointed into the wind and to control the braking mechanism that keeps the windmill from spinning too fast. Nobody is really sure what the differential is as to how much power the turbines pull off the grid versus how much they put back in. The only purpose wind power serves is to assuage people’s guilt that they are causing global warming and that this boondoggle is somehow going to save the planet. It’s a scam to the highest order.
THE TIME FOR WIND POWER is ready for obama and his radicial co-harts to empty out their wind blown lies and blow out of this country to the vast wind blown lands of siberia