Proposal from the Fish and Wildlife Service would allow 30 year permits for ‘incidental taking’ of bald eagles and golden eagles. A few other articles provide more news on the damage from unreliable energy.
5/4 – AP at FoxNews – New administration rule would permit thousands of eagle deaths at wind farms – After previous rules allowing killing of eagles for 30 years at wind farms plants were struck down, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced a new set of proposals.
Wind farm plant operations now will be able to get permits to kill off bald and golden eagles up to 30 years.
The limit will be 4,200 bald eagles a year. FWS estimates there are 143,000 bald eagles and 40,000 golden eagles in the country. That allows killing off 2.9% of the bald eagles every year. Seems to me that for a long-lived animal that is a rather high attrition rate.
The cost for an exemption from federal law is a mere $36,000 for the first five years and then $15,000 every five years thereafter. A pittance for permission to kill off as many eagles as happened to wander into your turbines. An incredible bargain concerning the legal fees that might be incurred to defend criminal indictments somewhere in the next three decades.
5/5 – Scientific American – U.S. Proposes Giving Wind Farms Permits for Eagle Deaths – Article reports on the FWS plan to give wind farms plants permits to kill eagles for 30 years. These would be categorized as ‘incidental takes’, which makes it legal to kill off a bunch of birds.
Official analysis says that killing up to 2,000 of the 40,000 golden eagles a year would not endanger them. Likewise, taking out up to 4,200 bald eagles a year would not endanger the estimated 143,000 in the U.S.
FWS has no clue how many eagles are killed by wind farms plants. They have a wild guess that 545 eagles are killed each year from all causes. Again, no clue how many get sliced-and-diced. Yet their official conclusion is that taking out 6,200 a year won’t be a problem.
5/1 – Stop These Things – Denmark Slashes Wind Power Subsidies to Curb Runaway Power Costs – Check out the graph showing average industrial electricity prices by country. A few data points, in cents per kWh:
- 6.75 – US
- 17.3 – EU average
- 20.2 – UK
- 22.6 – Germany
- 29.0 – Denmark
Now think what that does to the cost of manufacturing anything. Then imagine what it is doing to the competitiveness on the international market for any company operating in Europe.
3/10 – AP at Bakken.com – Big Wyoming wind farm clears another government hurdle – BLM approved the EIS for the Chokecherry-Sierra Madre project in Wyoming which is parked in Power Company of Wyoming, a subsidiary of Anschutz Corp.
The massive project calls for 229 turbines to be installed in 2019 and 271 in 2020 for an initial goal of 500 slice-and-dicers. Ultimately, the project will have 1,000 turbines spread across 340 square miles.
FWS is trying to make a wild guess how many golden and bald eagles will be killed off by the project.