Obama Gives Owners of Useless Wind Turbines License to Kill Bald and Golden eagles

"The bald eagle was chosen June 20, 1782 as the emblem of the United States of American, because of its long life, great strength and majestic looks."   

"The eagle represents freedom. Living as he does on the tops of lofty mountains, amid the solitary grandeur of Nature, he has unlimited freedom, whether with strong pinions he sweeps into the valleys below, or upward into the boundless spaces beyond."

Shame on Barack Obama for giving the owners of useless and ugly wind turbines a licence to kill US national birds, the symbols of freedom. But it is not a surprise - this administration has already long ago showed that it does not understand what the US as a society is all about:

Under pressure from the wind-power industry, the Obama administration said Friday it will allow companies to kill or injure eagles without the fear of prosecution for up to three decades.
The new rule is designed to address environmental consequences that stand in the way of the nation’s wind energy rush: the dozens of bald and golden eagles being killed each year by the giant, spinning blades of wind turbines.
An investigation by The Associated Press earlier this year documented the illegal killing of eagles around wind farms, the Obama administration’s reluctance to prosecute such cases and its willingness to help keep the scope of the eagle deaths secret. President Barack Obama has championed the pollution-free energy, nearly doubling America’s wind power in his first term as a way to tackle global warming. --

conservation groups, which have been aligned with the industry on other issues, said the decision by the Interior Department sanctions the killing of an American icon.
‘‘Instead of balancing the need for conservation and renewable energy, Interior wrote the wind industry a blank check,’’ said Audubon President and CEO David Yarnold in a statement. The group said it would challenge the decision. --

Another AP investigation recently showed that corn-based ethanol blended into the nation’s gasoline has proven more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and worse than the government acknowledges. --

A study by federal biologists in September found that wind farms since 2008 had killed at least 67 bald and golden eagles, a number that the researchers said was likely underestimated. That did not include deaths at Altamont Pass, an area in northern California where wind farms kill an estimated 60 eagles a year.

RSPB - the "UK's largest nature conservation charity" - "speaks out for birds" by building bird killing wind turbine

 

Fact: Wind turbines are deadly to birds and bats as well as needing huge subsidies

 

This is how the RSPB, the UK's largest nature conservation charity "speaks out for birds"

 

We've teamed up with green energy company Ecotricity and submitted a planning application for a wind turbine to be erected at our headquarters in Bedfordshire.

If the plans are approved then the wind turbine will be erected at The Lodge nature reserve near Sandy, at the earliest, in autumn 2014 and will measure 100m at its highest point. The turbine is predicted to produce the equivalent of two thirds of the RSPB’s total UK electricity needs.

Paul Forecast, Director of the RSPB in the East, said: “A wind turbine at our UK headquarters is the single biggest step we can take to reduce our carbon emissions, and will make a significant contribution to the RSPB’s carbon reduction targets.

Is there a clearer case of moral bankruptcy?

Wind turbines are killing machines threatening endangered species

Wind turbines are veritable killing machines. And the really sad thing is that they kill birds and bats that are already struggling:

The Spanish Ornithological Society in Madrid estimates that Spain's 18,000 wind turbines may be killing 6 million to 18 million birds and bats annually. “A blade will cut a griffon vulture in half,” says Bechard. “I've seen them just decapitated."

“The troubling issue with wind development is that we're seeing a growing number of birds of conservation concern being killed by wind turbines,” says Albert Manville, a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Arlington, Virginia.

But the rapid expansion of wind power can harm wildlife in multiple ways. Beyond direct collisions with turbines, wind farms threaten species by displacing habitat. And bats can develop fatal internal haemorrhaging as a result of air-pressure changes when they fly through the wake of a spinning blade.
--
But the concern is that turbines threaten species that are already struggling, such as bats, which in North America have been hit hard by white-nose fungus. Another vulnerable group is raptors, which are slow to reproduce and favour the wind corridors that energy companies covet. “There are species of birds that are getting killed by wind turbines that do not get killed by autos, windows or buildings,” says Shawn Smallwood, an ecologist who has worked extensively in Altamont Pass, California, notorious for its expansive wind farms and raptor deaths. Smallwood has found that Altamont blades slay an average of 65 golden eagles a year². “We could lose eagles in this country if we keep on doing this,” he says.


Other species at risk include the critically endangered California condors (Gymnogyps californicus) — which number only 226 in the wild — and the few hundred remaining whooping cranes (Grus americanus), concentrated in the central United States. Biologists can't say whether the increase in wind farms will cause the collapse of these or other bird species, which already face many threats. But waiting for an answer is not an option, says Smallwood. “By the time we do understand the population-level impacts, we might be in a place we don't want to be.”


Read the entire article here


This senseless killing of endangered birds and bats should of course be condemned by all, particularly those who say they are working for the protection of wild animals. But don´t expect that e.g. Greenpeace "activists" will be chaining themselves to wind turbines any time soon. No, Greenpeace is instead actively spreading false information about the danger to birds by wind turbines:

Myth: Wind turbines threaten bird populations.

Fact: Studies show that for every 10,000 bird fatalities, less than one is caused by wind turbines. For comparison, cats cause about 10 percent of bird deaths and nearly half are caused by collisions with buildings or windows.

In fact, a recent study published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that 40 percent of all species could face extinction because of global warming.

Monitoring of existing wind farms suggests that with proper location and construction, there is no adverse impact on bird populations.