Warning: This Post Contains Pictures the American Wind Energy Association and Some Environmental and Wildlife Protection Organizations like the Sierra Club Do Not Want You to See.
(Photo credits: Thank you to those organizations and people around the world who provide photographic evidence of this environmental tragedy. Among them are sekano.net, Lygeium, the Center for Biological Diversity, Mark Duchamp, Darryl Mueller and other dedicated organizations and people.)
Do you know where your money and representation goes when you support a wildlife, environmental or nature organization? If you think it is going to save and protect wildlife you might want to take a second look. (A list of some of the National wildlife protection groups can be found below.)
The Sierra Club, who pleads to its members for support to save The Endangered Species Act, is lobbying on the side of the American Wind Energy Association to take the teeth out of it. Even though thousands of birds, bats, eagles and other endangered species die every year from deadly collisions with wind turbines. And it is a global problem.
From the Sierra Club’s website:
“The Endangered Species Act is one of America’s most effective tools for safeguarding our fish and wildlife heritage.
Thanks to this landmark law, wild salmon still spawn in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest, wolves have returned to Yellowstone, and the bald eagle soars from coast to coast. The ESA has been successful in keeping over 99 percent of all the fish and wildlife under its care from going extinct, but the Bush administration is rushing to gut the law by changing regulations to make it easier for developers to pave and pollute the nation’s wildlands and our special places.”
While Sierra Club accuses the Bush administration of rushing to gut the law, and may not be attempting to change regulations, it is backing an industry that wants to ignore the laws by essentially sparing itself from oversight, compliance and responsibility with US Fish and Wildlife requested standards and regulations, the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Bald and Golden Eagle Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
Congressman Rahall D-W.VA proposed a section to a larger energy bill, now being debated in Congress, that would direct the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to publish standards for siting, construction and monitoring of wind projects to mitigate and control further illegal harm to protected wildlife and endangered species.
Of course, the wind energy developers, represented by the American Wind Energy Association, who has gotten a free ride on regulations thus far, went into a tail-spin of public relations hysteria claiming Rahall’s legislation was anti-wind and would “essentially outlaw” the generation of new wind power plants and wind turbines in the US and criminalize this rapidly developing industry.
And the Sierra Club is backing them up on the killing and/or watering down of this life-saving amendment while some important wildlife protection organizations simply refuse, or weren’t aware of it, to take a stand.
The American Wind Energy Association claims Subtitle D would burden wind power with ’sweeping new requirements that have never applied to other energy sectors’. Of course, no other energy sector has been responsible for the direct and irrefutable carnage of thousands of dead birds, bats, eagles and other endangered species in alarming and growing numbers right at the front steps of their industrial plants and facilities.
They also claim the US Fish and Wildlife Service and its scientists are by and large incompetent and ill-equipped to review existing and planned wind projects while omitting the fact that this review would be on behalf of the wildlife and endangered species the US Fish and Wildlife Service is mandated to protect. Not only are they charged with the responsibility of protecting birds and threatened and endangered species but they are also charged with enforcing the laws.
Additionally, the wind industry claims birds do not fly into wind turbines, they simply fly around them. This is based on one industry biased study done in Denmark, who is one of the largest producers and exporters of wind turbines in the world. And has been used over and over again in the media to suppress the truth on bird and bat kills at wind farms.
However AWEA also claims to be working with environmental groups and scientists to address the issue of the deaths to birds and bats at wind farms. So which is it? Are birds and bats being killed or are they not? If they are not, why is this industry claiming to be working to reduce a non-existent impact?
But Rahall, who supports wind power as a renewable energy resource, believes that while wind power should be a part of the Nation’s energy portfolio it needs to grow responsibly “I suspect” he said recently “wind projects are on a regular basis in violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act, yet no enforcement action is being taken”.
The evidence of Rahall’s statement is born out by the Center for Biological Diversity in California who has been fighting for these billion-dollar businesses to operate in compliance with the law. Over twenty-years there have been 17,000 to 25,000 illegal raptor (eagles, hawks, falcons and owls) deaths at the Altamont Pass Wind Farm and to date the laws have not been enforced, no fines have been paid nor has any meaningful mitigation taken place to prevent more deaths to raptors and endangered species there in the future. Additionally, new studies in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ontario and New York, to name a few, are showing thousands of migratory bats and birds are being slaughtered by wind turbine blades.
According to Donald Michael Fry, PhD, the Director of the Pesticides and Birds Program at the American Bird Conservancy, testimony to the House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans Oversight Hearing on: “Gone with the Wind: Impacts of Wind Turbines on Birds and Bats”:
“The mortality at wind farms is significant, because many of the species most impacted are already in decline and all sources of mortality contribute to the continuing decline.”
“The wind energy industry has been constructing and operating wind projects for almost 25 years with little state and federal oversight. They have rejected as either too costly or unproven techniques recommended by NWCC” (and other avian experts) “to reduce bird deaths. The wind industry ignores the expertise of state energy staff and the knowledgeable advice of Fish and Wildlife Service employees on ways to reduce or avoid bird and wildlife impacts.”
Please read the congressional testimony of a public interest law firm that provides legal representation to not for profit environmental, conservation and animal protection organizations HERE to understand why this bill is of vital importance to the development of the wind industry in this country and others.
Below are two of the Federal Laws Rahall’s proposal wants to see carried out and enforced by the US Fish and Wildlife Service that is being fought tooth and nail by the wind industry so they will not have to be in compliance or even take them into consideration when siting wind turbines:
(Click to read entire article)
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