Avian Mortality: Industrial Wind in Ecological Trouble
By Sherri Lange -- October 16, 2025“Wind projects are known to kill eagles, and climate extremists in the Biden admin still greenlit scores of these projects. @Interior is enforcing the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act to ensure that our national bird is not sacrificed for unreliable wind facilities!” ( – Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, X)
The U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, posted a memorandum back in August calling on the agency to ensure compliance with the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, “to ensure that our national bird is not sacrificed for unreliable wind facilities!”
This is a long overdue threat to major wind projects that have been living a lie. After all, it was the Los Angeles director of the Sierra Club who coined the term “Cuisinarts of the Air” to capture the bird-chopping nature of industrial blades to the most treasured/protected birds of prey.
The “avian mortality” problem has a long history. May the new initiative finally (!) get to the bottom of things.
Government Neglect
The Burgum/DOI memorandum is significant given the failure of the Fish and Wildlife Service to act on the documented killing of Golden and Bald Eagles by industrial wind. The dodge of estimating electrocutions from power poles as a “mitigation” strategy in this area (see David Wojick’s analysis, below) is unacceptable.
North American Platform Against Windpower (NA-PAW) keenly awaits the new DOI priority. It is well known that the ability to “mitigate” eagle deaths include a lack of suitable and rigorous testing; incomplete implementation; limited technology; ignored interacting factors; site specific requirements; lack of collaboration. Add: developer-led counting and methodology; use of less bird occupied testing sites; natural flow of natural processes where scavenging replaces/negates counting; massive level obfuscation including reference points to cats and cars and windows.
The actual numbers of kills are completely unknown. ABC (American Bird Conservancy) estimates some years ago (2021 article), 880 bats and 573,000 birds dead. Actual numbers, again years ago, referencing the Spanish Ornithological Society numbers, a valid coordinate to the USA, is between 13 and 31 million annually. Then add electrocution.
In a 2014 study, researchers estimated that 25.5 million birds are killed each year due to collisions with powerlines, and another 5.6 million are killed by electrocutions. Therefore, powerlines built exclusively to connect new wind facilities to the existing energy grid result in additional bird mortalities that should be factored in to the total toll in birds associated with wind energy development.
David Wojick of CFACT (Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow) has penned several succinct assessments of the problem. “Federal regulators concluded that the golden eagle population cannot survive increased kills from human activity,” he noted, “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 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. See link for full report. See here for executive summary.
Time for Action
NA-PAW expresses the hope that Secretary Burgum’s request to FWS is diligently applied, that no new wind factory permits are allowed; and retroactive closures of non-compliant wind factories are administered post haste.
Non-compliant yardsticks must be rejected. After-the-fact counts of dead birds and bats (in this case protected species, Golden and Bald Eagles) is not nearly enough. The corollary idea that reducing related power pole deaths can in some way “mitigate” wind turbine deaths is not credible.
NOTE: Mr. Wojick has not had a reply from his numerous emails to FWS.
CONTACTS:
Sherri Lange, CEO North American Platform Against Wind Power, Great Lakes Wind Truth; Vice President Canada, Save the Eagles International” Advisory Board Member, All About Energy
www.na-paw.org www.greatlakeswindtruth.org www.allaboutenergy.org
David Wojick dwojick@craigellachie.us
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to CFACT. As a civil engineer with a Ph.D. in logic and analytic philosophy of science, he brings a unique perspective to complex policy issues. He specializes in science and technology intensive issues, especially in energy and environment. As a cognitive scientist he also does basic research on the structure and dynamics of complex issues and reasoning. This research informs his policy analyses. He has written hundreds of analytical articles. Many recent examples can be found at https://www.cfact.org/author/dwojick/ Often working as a consultant on understanding complex issues, Dr. Wojick’s numerous clients have included think tanks, trade associations, businesses and government agencies. Examples range from CFACT to the Chief of Naval Research and the Energy Department’s Office of Science. He has served on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University and the staff of the Naval Research Laboratory. He is available for confidential consulting, research and writing.
NPR and PBS reporting of this issue will commence any day now
John, thanks, and let’s express hope that rigor will be applied.
Media could easily explode this issue. It has lingered since wind turbines first entered our landscapes, now oceans. Many have written about the inability to “count,” and others have scrutinized the abysmal lack of diligence and oversight. One wonders, does the word, “Endangered,” mean anything?
I’ve found over 20 years that once advised, people get truly outraged and hence many are involved.
Many thanks!
Hopefully Interior Secretary Doug Burgum will be successful in ending this horrible bird kill madness.
Thank you Sherri Lange and Master Resources for following this important story.
Thanks, Michael. The ironi.es are not lost on most of us now. We all understand that this wind industry premised its profit taking on ‘saving the planet.’ The damages done to wildlife, national birds, Golden Eagles, Bald Eagles, and so many other endangered species, Whooping Cranes for one, are also uncountable. It is most refreshing to see the Interior Secretary, Mr. Burgum, address the most obvious elements of this slaughter. Useless. Industrial Wind really if analyzed, produces net zero. Boondoggle. Or as Presi
Thanks Michael
It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the industry purports to “save the planet,” but is in reality a massive killing machine. We remain hopeful that Secretary Burgum will expose and end the excuse machine for profits.
Heavily researched does not guarantee correct. Even one erroneous assumption in common renders pages of references, papers and citations useless. CAGW’s GHE contains three such assumptions.
GHE claims without it Earth becomes 33 C cooler, a 255 K, -18 C, ball of ice.
Wrong.
Naked Earth would be much like the Moon, barren, 400 K lit side, 100 K dark.
TFK_bams09 heat balance graphic uses the same 63 twice violating GAAP and calculating out of thin air a 396 BB/333 “back”/63 net GHE radiative forcing loop violating LoT 1 & 2.
Wrong.
Likewise, the ubiquitous plethora of clones.
GHE requires Earth to radiate “extra” energy as a BB.
Wrong.
A BB requires all energy leaving the system to do so by radiation. Per TFK_bams09 60% leaves by kinetic modes, i.e. conduction, convection, advection and latent rendering BB impossible.
GHE is bogus and CAGW a scam so alarmists must resort to fear mongering, lies, lawsuits, censorship and violence.
Nick, Thanks. A new book out by Ron Barmby. Sunset on Net Zero.
I loved his first: Sunlight on Climate Change: A Heretic’s Guide to Global Climate Hysteria
Recommend both. Highly.
Nell Greenfieldboyce and NPR report about birds hitting buildings but willfully, deliberately and intentionally ignore the massive slaughter by wind turbines
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(NPR) As hundreds of millions of birds head south, the invisible danger is glass
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
October 17, 2025
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/17/nx-s1-5571014/bird-migration-collisions-glass-buildings
Nell, Yes. Inevitable death from glass buildings, cars; also not countable. But massive. However, eagles and larger birds of prey don’t often crash into cars, windows, get killed by cats. To mix and match these mortality events, is not fair at all. And Yes, all cumulative. And Yes, you are right on, John Garrett, the bird slaughter is willful, and ignoring completely that the machinery is useless, producing net zero power. PROFIT taking.
If you have a chance to see the destruction at Wolfe Island, as ONE example, see the images of dead birds of all kinds, it is shocking and precautionary.
Critics of that project, considered the most dangerous of all North American wind sites, say:
“Based on methods commonly used across the rest of North America, Smallwood estimates that Wolfe Island kills 21.9 birds per turbine per year.”
Now multiply those results across the USA and Canada, perimeters of industrial wind turbines around the Great Lakes, a prime migratory route, and just use your imagination.
See a map here:
https://ccsage.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/map-of-ontario-wind-turbine-locations/
Then look at Michigan. Never ever forget California’s kill of eagles.
Then look at habitat displacement as well.
Of course, Eagles do crash into windows. However, at a much lower rate than smaller birds.
“Yes, golden eagles can crash into windows, especially during migration, although it is a much rarer event than for smaller, more urban-dwelling birds. Migratory birds, including raptors like eagles, are particularly vulnerable because they are unfamiliar with the buildings in areas they are just passing through. ”
But turbines we need to remember, are often placed in windy higher range mountainous areas: prime soaring and feeding and nesting areas for larger birds, eagles.
Thanks again. Important to view all the angles. And important not to lose the vast numbers of all birds from this scourge. Not beneficial in any manner.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/07/wind-energy-company-guilty-killing-eagles
“ESI … acknowledged that at least 150 bald and golden eagles have died in total since 2012, across 50 of its 154 wind energy facilities. 136 of those deaths have been affirmatively determined to be attributable to the eagle being struck by a wind turbine blade,” the Department of Justice said.
According to federal prosecutors, ESI is responsible for the “documented deaths of golden eagles due to blunt force trauma from being struck by a wind turbine blade at a particular facility in Wyoming or New Mexico, where ESI had not applied for the necessary permits”.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320724005263#:~:text=Mortality%20from%20wind%20turbine%20collisions,including%20%3E80%2C000%20raptors%20(Smallwood%2C%202013).
“Mortality from wind turbine collisions in the United States has been estimated to exceed half a million birds annually, including >80,000 raptors (Smallwood, 2013). Raptors are among the species most strongly affected by wind turbines (primarily through direct mortality) and as such, are particularly vulnerable to expanding wind energy development (Diffendorfer et al., 2021; Madders and Whitfield, 2006; Watson et al., 2018). However, the large-scale population-level impacts of wind energy development remain largely unknown.”