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Bird conservancy sues feds over eagle kill rule

Wisconsin Gazette

American Bird Conservancy has filed suit in federal court against the U.S. Department of the Interior, alleging multiple violations of federal law in connection with the agency’s regulation that allows wind energy companies and others to obtain 30-year permits to kill eagles without risking prosecution.

In April, the environmental group notified DOI and its U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of its intent to sue, citing violations of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and other statutes in connection with the new eagle kill rule.

“Eagles are among our nation’s most iconic and cherished birds. They do not have to be sacrificed for the next 30 years for the sake of unconstrained wind energy,” said Michael Hutchins, national coordinator of ABC’s Bird Smart Wind Energy Program. “Giving wind companies a 30-year pass to kill bald and golden eagles without knowing how it might affect their populations is a reckless and irresponsible gamble that millions of Americans are unwilling to take.”

The previous rule, adopted in 2009, provided for a maximum duration of five years for each permit to kill eagles. According to a statement issued at that time by FWS in the Federal Register, a permit of any longer duration “would be incompatible with the preservation of the bald or golden eagle.”

But four years later, DOI has increased by six-fold the time during which eagles could be killed.

ABC believes wind energy and other renewable energy sources can be encouraged without putting eagles at risk.

Hutchins said, “In the government’s rush to expand wind energy, shortcuts were taken in implementing this rule that should not have been allowed. We understand that some bird mortality is inevitable. However, in this case, long-term, cumulative impacts to eagle populations were not properly assessed, and the 30-year take permit rule was adopted in the absence of the required NEPA analysis concerning impacts on eagle populations or any other species that share the eagles’ range.”

“The recovery of bald eagle populations is an FWS success story — an example of how a species’ population, with enough time and resources, can be brought around,” added Hutchins. “Americans take pride in the fact that bald eagles are once again a common sight in many places across the country. Their popularity and symbolic importance suggests that the American people are not going to tolerate the deaths of many to wind turbines.”

In 2009, 22,000 wind turbines were in operation in the United States, representing 25 gigawatts of installed capacity — a small fraction of the 300GW of production capacity needed to meet the 2030 federal goal of generating 20 percent of U.S. electricity from renewable energy.

By 2030, wind energy project growth is expected to impact almost 20,000 square miles of terrestrial habitat  — an area larger than the combined areas of New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island — and more than 4,000 square miles of marine habitat, some of this critical to threatened and other protected species.

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