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Killing endangered birds while ‘saving’ the planet
Credit: By Dick Piland | Longmont Times-Call | 12/29/2015 | www.timescall.com ~~
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Translate: FROM English | TO English
On Sunday, Dec. 20, the Times-Call published an article titled “Bald eagles lose nest after Erie tree cut down.” It described all the fuss and ado over a dead tree being cut down that once supported an eagle’s nest. Evidently the property owner had to apply for a permit, which was granted after more than two years of cooperation, and only after paying a mitigation fee. All of this was overseen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies. You might like to know that according to the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, if you shoot a Bald Eagle you can be subject to a maximum of two years in Jail and a $250,000 fine.
What the article conveniently forgot to mention was that wind turbines indiscriminately destroy thousands of birds every year and no one seems to care! Brian Seasholes recently published in Forbes magazine an article that estimated that giant wind turbines kill around 600,000 birds annually. He credited his article to a published scholarly article in the Wildlife Society Bulletin.
The latest wind power plan is likely to cost taxpayers a lot of money and will cost a lot of birds their lives. Wind turbines have a significant impact on this nation’s birds, especially birds of prey and other large species. The American Bird Conservancy even thinks it’s possible the golden eagle will end up on the endangered species list because so many are being killed by wind turbines. In fact, the Obama administration is so fixated on wind power that it recently gave a California-based wind company an exemption from prosecution if a turbine kills a California condor, one of the rarest birds in the world, with only around 400 alive today. And the administration is hoping to grant a similar exemption to all wind farms along the 1,500-mile Texas to North Dakota migratory corridor for the whooping crane, another of the world’s rarest birds.
What it boils down to is this: If you shoot an eagle, you are in big trouble. But if a protected bird is chopped to pieces with a wind turbine, well … that’s OK!
Obama’s plan is to double the number of turbines, which means over 1.2 million birds per year will be slaughtered, while your electric utility bill will likely double due to the higher cost of this alternate energy source.
Wind companies avoid paying fines that other energy companies would face if they killed birds; they avoid hefty legal fees that companies incur when prosecuted by the feds; and they are allowed to build wind farms in areas others would not be allowed into. All this is because of the progressive and radical environmental support for the global warming hoax. It is utter madness and hypocrisy personified.
Dick Piland has a BS in general science from Oregon State University and is a Niwot resident.
This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.
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