SOS for whooping cranes (updated) 

Just in – According to experts, whooping cranes will be extinct within five years, unless the burgeoning wind energy industry is stopped.

And with wind-industry lobby money firmly in our politician’s pockets, it is pretty certain that the downward-spiraling whooping crane population will be blamed on everything from climate-change to droughts – Anything except the most visible and lethal culprit, the guillotine blades of so-called ‘green’ propeller-style wind turbines.

There are so many turbines now, and so many more planned (40,000 are planned for their habitat) as new wind ‘farms’ (read: industrial scale wind utility installations) proliferate, that the magnificent migrating whooping cranes, snatched back from the brink of extinction and widely celebrated in both prose and film, will have no migration routes left free of the disastrous and deadly killer blades.

Have we ‘saved’ them, only to subject a remnant population to languishing in designated protected ‘parks’? Are we dooming yet another wild species to live out their lives as, basically, zoo specimens in kinda large zoo habitats, just so yet another environmentally damaging industry can get a free ride?

According to soaring bird expert and wind-farm activist Jim Wiegand, it’s very likely. “The Whooping Cranes will be gone within 5 years. By then there will be so many turbines with so much rotor sweep it will be impossible for them to survive. The turnover in the population will be too great and the population will lose their breeders.

“The official blame for their demise will be some disease like botulism, bad weather or both . A lot of hoopla will be made about how they (USFWS) are going to revive the population from their contrived catastrophe. Money will then be allocated and dolled out to the corrupt for their bogus studies. But it will all be a lie. In the end all we will have left of the Whooping Cranes will be some small populations from breeding projects that do not migrate. Just like what has happened the condors. They will be fed and taken care of, but their world will have been taken from them.

“About the only thing positive I see in all this,” Wiegand continued, “Is that the public will see first hand how corrupt this great nation is. By knowing the truth, changes can then be made. As for job creation, millions could be created by sending people out to rebuild forests, ecosystems, and lost soil. This will actually help offset carbon buildup instead of the ridiculous carbon credit scam. A scam that rewards the worst perpetrators.”

For any readers not yet familiar with the facts about what a poor choice industrial wind projects are for both energy efficiency and the environment, the author offers this link on the real costs of wind energy, which explains just why industrial wind is not the green, wildlife friendly option all the ads make it out to be.

Sadly, many conservation organizations seem hypnotized by the same wind-lobby green-washing misinformation as the general media. Foolhardy legislation is about to be passed, in the form of still more tax credits for the wind industry. All while casualty counts are being under-reported or (literally) buried, and now it seems, key personnel will be absent during a time when crane mortality should be most closely monitored.

“I was told that the head biologist at Aransas is leaving in early December (and) the Project Leader (aka Refuge Manager) is retiring the end of November,” Wiegand reported via email. “I was also told that it may take several months before a new Project Leader is appointed. So who counts the cranes this year?

“To me any delay in the whooping crane count is obvious. They want no bad news to get out before the vote in Congress. So now we not only are dealing with the new bogus count methodology, we will probably be be dealing with incompetent personnel that the USFWS can conveniently produce as sacrificial lambs. Keep in mind that the true numbers will eventually come out, especially when the locals, tourists and bird watchers stop seeing them on their wintering grounds.”

One way readers can help fight this corruption is to demand that accurate counts be done. As Mr. Wiegand commented below the Reader’s Editorial “TELL CONGRESS– DON’T RENEW TAX CREDITS FOR INDUSTRIAL WIND PROJECTS” by Terry Weiner, Desert Protective Council, in East County Magazine:

Do not let the wind industry & USFWS manipulate the coming vote

In the next few weeks Congress will vote on the wind industry’s production tax credit. The wind industry has had this kickback from the taxpayer for decades. This year’s gift from the taxpayer could amount to 12 billion dollars or even more. This behavior makes perfect sense when you are hiding impacts so an industry can prosper. After all something has to be done. As a result of this move, the USFWS now counts/estimates numbers with shell game methodology. Their numbers can no longer be trusted

That is why what I am about to say is very important. Congress should demand an accurate and verifiable 2012 winter count for the whooping cranes along with complete age class figures. The public has a right to know the fate of the whooping cranes and to also how many captive bred birds are being dumped into the population. This count should be done before there is a vote on the production tax credit (PTC) so members will have to answer to the public if they vote yes.

If Congress does not do this, then it is apparent they too are part of this cover-up. I encourage everyone to follow this closely.

He adds, “One would think that after knowing the true impacts, no one would ever want to reward this industry for what has truly become an environmental disaster. But this isn’t the way it works. If it did, this industry’s killer wind turbines would have been thrown in the bone yard in 1984 when headless eagles started showing at wind farms.”

The only way to stop this mockery of a so-called ‘Earth-friendly energy industry’ is to speak out, call your politicians out and hold their toes to the fire. Demand accountability and full disclosure.

Letting greed and corruption destroy whats’s left of our wildlife and wild areas is not an option.

As Mr.Weiner concludes in his editorial, “Please spread the word. It is such a shame to be destroying huge expanses of habitat, the plants and animals that live there and our Native American cultural heritage for these inefficient wind turbines.”

For more information on the truth about wind farms, click here.

Cathy Taibbi, Wildlife Conservation Examiner

Cathy Taibbi is a former professional zookeeper and conservation watchdog, sharing her passion through writing, art and roll-up-your-sleeves, hands-on work. At home she’s created a backyard wildlife habitat and raises her beloved pet chickens.

[graphics and links at source]