Posted on 06/14/2011 10:26:37 PM PDT by RC one
ALTAMONT, Calif., June 6 (UPI) -- Wind power turbines have been blamed for the deaths of scores of protected golden eagles in California's Bay Area, wildlife experts say.
The death count of more than 60 birds a year during the last three decades worries field biologists because the turbines in the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area -- which have been providing thousands of homes with emissions-free electricity since the 1980s -- are situated in a region of rolling grasslands and canyons containing one of the highest densities of nesting golden eagles in the United States, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.
"It would take 167 pairs of local nesting golden eagles to produce enough young to compensate for their mortality rate related to wind energy production," biologist Doug Bell, manager of the East Bay Regional Park District's wildlife program, said. "We only have 60 pairs."
The Fish and Wildlife Service says about 440,000 birds are killed at wind farms across the country each year.
So far, no wind energy company has been prosecuted by federal wildlife authorities in the death of protected birds, the Times reported. Environmentalists have had some success -- often through litigation -- requiring the energy industry and federal authorities to modify the size, shape and placement of wind turbines, the newspaper said.
Instead of answering my legitimate questions you just continue to rail against my position.
How wide a net do you want to cast for your mass arrest?
Will you arrest the granny for putting her savings into a pension fund that invest is wind power?
You are not following your own argument to it’s logical conclusion.
Let me know when you’ve scuttled your own UK/Scotland windmills before demanding we take down ours for the sake of a pest which is FAR from endangered nationally.
Proponents haven’t advertised a huge potential upside of wind turbines:
The shredded poultry downstream could be used to feed the starving victims of the Baraqqi Depression.
My UK/Scotland windmills huh? I live in Ohio. You have no “legitimate questions”, position, or arguments incidentally. Eagles are not pests, you are. I think we’re done here.
Sorry to confuse you with another poster, who had a Scotland tag?
in any case, since you cannot answer simple questions, we are indeed done.
Bird ping—article from back in June :)
Sad to read that there are still a few FReepers who believe that wind power is harmless to eagles and other birds. Yes, window strikes and housecats kill far more wild birds than do windmills, but the point is -- WINDMILLS ARE UNNECESSARY!
Wind power is extremely land intensive, unpredictable, and inefficient -- like all ancient technologies.
And worser still, it kills birds.
All that said, I'll never understand why the treehuggers so love this technology. It makes no logical sense. But maybe the problem is with me. I'm assuming treehuggers are capable of logical thought. Ha Ha!
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