How clean energy collides with the environment — namely birds
Ten years ago, a historic first happened. It involved a huge utility company and a pair of wind farms in Wyoming. And birds.
Wind farms are seemingly benign, reducing carbon emissions and getting the country to a cleaner future to wean Americans off oil and gas.
But how benign are they?
The U.S. Department of Justice did not think so in 2013, bringing for the first time criminal charges against Duke Renewable Energy under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act for unpermitted avian takings at wind projects.
The charges stemmed from the discovery of 14 dead golden eagles and 149 other protected birds — including hawks, blackbirds, larks, wrens and sparrows — by the company at its “Campbell Hill” and “Top of the World” wind projects in Converse County between 2009 and 2013. The two wind projects are comprised of 176 large wind turbines sited on private agricultural land.
How wind turbines kill birds
According to papers filed with the court, commercial wind power projects can cause the deaths of federally protected birds in four primary ways: collision with wind turbines, collision with associated meteorological towers, collision with, or electrocution by, associated electrical power facilities, and nest abandonment or behavior avoidance from habitat modification. According to the the settlement, Duke Renewable Energy knew about the risks.
Robert G. Dreher, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division said at the time: “In this plea agreement, Duke Energy Renewables acknowledges that it constructed these wind projects in a manner it knew beforehand would likely result in avian deaths.”
The company then instituted protective measures, but the damage had already been done.
Under a plea agreement with the government, the company was sentenced to pay fines, restitution and community service totaling $1 million and was placed on probation for five years and was required to come up with a compliance plan aimed at preventing bird deaths at its four commercial wind projects in Wyoming.
Innovation, mapping, military and more
Wyoming is a key nesting area for the golden eagle, which is struggling in population numbers in the West due to a several factors, including increasing wind energy development, lead poisoning, habitat loss, declining prey populations and other factors.
It is a sad fate for a raptor that has a wing span of 7 feet and the ability to dive at speeds clocked at 150 mph. The golden eagle is an apex predator with great power, with talons exerting gripping strength at least 10 times that of a human.
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In Wyoming, the Teton Raptor Center worked in conjunction with Cal Poly Humboldt, Wyoming Natural Diversity Database at the University of Wyoming, Natural Resource Geospatial, and Gage Cartographics to create an online mapping tool to help guide management of the golden eagle.
“RaptorMapper can be used by utility companies to assess risk in initial project planning to avoid costly eagle fatalities and, at the same time, help direct those mitigation dollars to areas that will have the greatest benefit to eagles,” said Bryan Bedrosian, team leader for the RaptorMapper project,
Bedrosian is the conservation director for the Teton Raptor Center, and adjunct senior scientist at Wyoming Natural Diversity Database. “Being able to identify and calculate the value of any area of the state for golden eagles is critical to maintaining their populations for future generations.”
For the past three years, scientists have developed models and maps of key golden eagle habitat across Wyoming and the surrounding regions. Using thousands of nesting records and tens of millions of locations collected from tagged golden eagles by many biologists from across the country, the team identified previously undetected important seasonal habitats for the species.
In a way, RaptorMapper is an evolutionary in its approach to save a protected species, using tons of information to track risk and vulnerabilities.
“Developers, biologists, and landowners can all evaluate how important any area is to golden eagles,” said Jeff Dunk, a professor at Cal Poly Humboldt and a member of the research team. “For example, RaptorMapper.com shows the best 20% of nesting habitat is concentrated within only 5% of Wyoming, while the lowest 20% occur across 50% of the state,” he said. Using these maps to direct conservation actions in those limited areas of high value will have much greater impact to the population.”
There are many organizations involved in trying to help the golden eagle and give hope for the species survival.
Due to federal regulations protecting the golden eagle, the Department of Defense with its military installations in Utah has a huge vested interest in minimizing inadvertent harm to the species. Because of this, the largest golden eagle research was undertaken in the western United States and garnered national recognition in 2020. In the collaborative effort by the department and Hawkwatch International, researchers scaled cliffs and trees to capture the nestlings, do a health check and put GPS trackers on them.
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Utah wind farms also are doing what they can to mitigate avian deaths, working with federal authorities, the military and others to protect vital species.
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Will it make a difference? Time will tell.
