The Incompetent and Nefarious Agency That Has Been Sacrificing Eagles for the Sake of Green Political Correctness

Guest Post by CFact.

CFACT just released a troubling report by senior advisor David Wojick about the dramatic threat wind turbines pose to bald and golden eagles.

Federal regulators concluded that the golden eagle population cannot survive increased kills from human activity and also determined that wind turbines substantially increase eagle deaths.

The feds then offered a solution only a bureaucrat could love, don’t protect the eagles from turbine strikes, but “offset” their deaths by reducing electrocutions from power poles.

Government being as efficient as it is, they then underestimated the number of power poles that would need to be made “safe” by a factor of as much as 241 and failed to save any meaningful number of eagles.

Executive Summary

Nearly 15 years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) determined that the golden eagle population could not withstand an increase in human-caused mortality. However, a large queue of proposed wind projects sought FWS permits exempting them from harm they may cause eagles under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act—permits that would inevitably increase the kill rate.

In response, the FWS created an offset program in which eagle deaths caused by wind turbines would purportedly be compensated for by reducing electrocution deaths from power poles. We now know this offset program has completely failed, as there has been no measurable reduction in electrocution deaths.

The likely cause of this failure is FWS’s use of a wildly inaccurate electrocution death rate. As a result, the number of power poles made “safe” is just a tiny fraction of what would be required to create a legitimate offset. While FWS currently requires about 278 poles to be “made safe” per wind-killed eagle, the correct number, according to the results presented in this report, may be closer to 67,000. It is no wonder the program has failed.

At a minimum, FWS should issue no new wind power eagle-kill permits until the glaring issues uncovered in this study are resolved. Accurate electrocution death rates must be determined. Given there are well over 100 million power poles in America, the offset numbers may prove so high that the program becomes unfeasible. In that case, wind power development must stop. Existing facilities may need to be retired as well.

Check out Wojick’s report here.

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others.

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