The Voice of Dead Eagles at Shiloh IV (Part III)

By Jim Wiegand -- July 18, 2014

As former agents Sam Jojola and Lucinda Schroder previously pointed out, the FWS eagle killing permit process is not enforceable and does not work.

How could it?  With only voluntary regulations, no accountability, and the industry hiding most of their mortality with rigged studies, these permits are nothing more than a rubber stamp from the Interior Department.

A few months back the Duke Energy case received a lot of national media attention for their killing of eagles. But despite what is being published, the Duke Energy case does not demonstrate that the FWS permit process works. If it was working, nearly every wind project in the country would be in legal trouble.

I read the impacts statements used in the approval process. They fraudulently claimed or estimated that eagle mortality from the turbines would be low. These impact statements were backed up with other bogus wind industry studies that hid most of the turbine mortality that took place.

If the permit process did work, the Duke energy wind farms would have been torn down due to the fraudulent documents used in the permitting process. Sure they paid a fine, but the FWS is still allowing Duke Energy to kill eagles with their turbines  and the numbers killed will not be known. In addition the shills that put together all the fraudulent documents have never singled out for their part in any of this.

The current FWS permit process also allows other wind farms in the region of the Duke Energy turbines to kill even more eagles.

Reporting and tracking eagle deaths

Recently a five year eagle killing permit was approved for the Shiloh IV wind project and the official FWS  response for all comments received for the  was that their decision was based upon………. “The best scientific information available” and “we used the existing data and best science available to predict risk.”

None of this is the truth. It only appears true if one accepts the rigged research. This is what the FWS has done and this is what they have been doing for decades.

In a highly publicized study published last year, a group of Fish and Wildlife Service researchers reviewed public sources, including documents released (this is voluntary) by wind energy companies, and found a minimum of 85 eagle deaths reported at 32 wind energy facilities in the country between 1997 and June 2012. The study pointed out that there is a scarcity of hard data about bird deaths at wind farms, and that other researchers have estimated as many as 67-75 golden eagles are killed each year by the wind turbines in the hills of Altamont Pass near Livermore.

The Pagel study is worthless because of the minute amount of information  used in the  analysis.

As the  study’s (pages 157-162) lead author, Joel Pagel recently pointed out: “There are wind facilities where there has been no monitoring for any type of migratory bird fatality, there are many of those facilities in the country….”

He should have also  mentioned that this pertains to nearly every wind farm in Texas.

The Pagel Study also did not mention that the Interior Department along with FWS are sitting on a mountain of scientific data pertaining to dead eagles.  It is not just data from the eagles killed at 32 wind energy facilities, it is data from hundreds of wind farms, and tens of thousands of eagles.  This data has accumulated from the eagle carcasses sent to the National Eagle Repository.

For those that have never heard of this facility, the National Eagle Repository has been a distribution center or clearing house for eagle bodies, feathers, and body parts for decades. Most of which are sent off to Native Americans.

Very little information has been released to the public about the National Eagle Repository. This includes the hidden arrangement the FWS has with the wind industry. An arrangement that requires most wind farms outside of Texas to save, process, and arrange for these eagles to be shipped off to Denver. The FWS does not require much of America’s wind farms, but they do require that these wind farms save their eagle carcasses.

A compelling video and a direct quote from a study……….

“After all relevant data were recorded; the carcass was collected, placed in a labeled plastic bag, and stored in an on-site freezer. All golden eagle remains were shipped to the National Eagle Repository in Commerce City, Colorado, as directed by the USFWS.”

In this  YouTube  video  between 2:40 and 3:20,  the speaker discusses freezers and the huge quantity of dead eagles seen in these freezers at a wind farm.  The speaker, Stan Moore also happens to be one of the eagle experts that worked on the  radio tracking studies conducted around Altamont showing wind turbines and their infrastructure were the number one source of mortality for the golden eagles in the region.

Stan Moore did not know it but he was actually talking about a bulk shipment that was eventually sent on to the National Eagle Repository in Denver.  He also did not know that as part of their daily activities, wind farm workers  are always looking for these turbine fatalities and routinely process them for the Repository.

There are shipping records for all these eagle carcasses sent to the Denver Repository going back to 1995 . I  know this  because as stated in the 1998 Senate report, “The FWS covers all expenses associated with shipping and processing the eagles.”

The FWS also ships and receives eagle carcasses found in the vicinity of winds farms. This is important because many eagles that are mortally wounded from blade strikes  wander far away from turbines like this bald eagle found in Iowa.

Dead eagles and a growing industry

In 1994 the Clinton administration was very aware that a new source of eagle carcasses was available from wind farms. At the time the FWS was not equipped to handle or process all these valuable carcasses.  In a move to properly handle these carcasses,  then-President Clinton ( 1994 Memorandum  ) ordered that government agencies and departments were to take steps to improve collection and transfer of eagle parts to the fullest extent possible under the law.

“… each agency responsible for managing Federal lands to diligently and expeditiously recover salvageable eagles found on lands under their jurisdiction and ensure that the eagles are promptly shipped to the National Eagle Repository (“Repository”). To assist agencies in this expanded effort, the Secretary of the Interior shall issue guidelines to all relevant agencies for the proper shipment of eagles to the Repository. After receiving these guidelines, agencies shall immediately adopt policies, practices, and procedures necessary in accordance with these guidelines to recover and transfer eagles to the Repository promptly.

The Department of the Interior shall be responsible for coordinating any interagency efforts to address continuing executive branch actions necessary to achieve the objectives of this memorandum.

As a result, the National Repository was established in 1995 in Denver.  The memorandum did not say that this information was to be kept a secret, and President Clinton did not say that the Interior department could withhold this information from the public or from scientific scrutiny.

I have obtained a small portion of this highly elusive Interior Department information pertaining to the Eagle repository from 1997-2013.   What I have uncovered will shock many.  I was not surprised because I  have learned  from reading rigged turbine mortality research , to expect nothing but deception from the wind industry the Interior Department.

From the publicity and media coverage over the year’s, one would think that most of the dead eagles being shipped to the repository in Denver are coming from around California or Region 1.   It is the opposite.  Region  1 now ships the fewest dead eagles to Denver.   I did not count the region 2 numbers because the state of Texas is a state where wind farms are not required to ship their dead birds to the repository or for that matter report anything pertaining to wildlife impacts.

                                                                                                                                                               

Facts about the Eagle Carcasses Sent to the Eagle Repository

Wind farms are one of the primary sources that supply the National Eagle Repository.

 

–    Since 1997 the Eagle Repository has received approximately 28,600 eagle carcasses  yet the 2013 Pagel study, with very limited public information, discusses only 85 of them.  There are still 28,515 eagle carcasses to account for.

—    Golden Eagles carcasses being sent to the repository from Region 1 (California) have been declining. This reduction in carcasses can be explained by population declines that have been documented. At one time over 20-30% of the carcasses received came from California now it is down 7% .

–    The number of Bald eagle carcasses  sent to the Eagle Repository have increased by about 250% since 2000.

 

–    From 1997-2004 the Repository received approximately 10,600 eagle carcasses and each of these years set records for carcasses sent into the repository or orders filled for Native Americans.

 

–    From 2005- 2013 during a period of rapid wind energy development in America, the Eagle Repository received approximately 18,000 eagle carcasses and the majority of these carcasses were bald eagles.

 

–    Since 1997 orders filled by the Eagle Repository for eagle bodies and parts have increased by 366%, from 1213 in to 4438 in 2013

 

–   Since 1997 a much higher percentage of the eagle carcasses received by the Eagle Repository are more mutilated than in the past, a condition typically caused by wind turbine blade strikes.

 

–   In America the most likely place for a person to ever find an eagle carcass is at or in the vicinity of a wind farm.

 

–   The  regions that now ship the most eagle carcasses to the repository are the regions that have installed the most wind energy  in eagle habitat since 2006.

Getting more information  

Finding an eagle carcass is a rare event and the most likely place to find one is where there are people. There are reports of a few found  along a highways, a few dozen here and there found in the procession of poachers, or several hundred found from a power line electrocutions,. But we are taking about many thousands of eagle carcasses that are unaccounted for. But the most likely place for a person to ever find an eagle carcass is around a wind farm located in eagle habitat . This was documented by the eagle radio tracking studies (Hunt) conducted around Altamont.

Since 2006  three FWS Regions of the US, have installed  an additional 27,300 MW ‘s  of wind energy .  In early 2006 the installed wind energy capacity for the entire U.S was only 9175 MW ‘s.  These 3 regions are shipping the majority of eagle carcasses off to Denver.

It is my opinion that over 50% of the approximately 28,600 eagle carcasses shipped to Denver since 1997 have been killed by wind turbines. This includes thousands of unreported Bald Eagle fatalities. Every single one of  these  eagle carcasses has a trail back to where they were found and to the people that found them. The Interior department is concealing this important information.

I am currently working with others to get this information through the Freedom of Information Act. All of this could take years.

The Interior Department  and the current Administration are in a rush to give the wind industry their 30 year eagle killing permits. They are pursuing this even though they have concealed the cause of death to thousands of eagles. The public should not stand for this rigging, this corruption, or the collusion.

 

No decision should be made on the 30 year eagle killing permits until all the eagle mortality information from the Denver Repository can be analyzed, be validated, and has been made public. There is also the possibility that the National Repository and “other FWS storage facilities” have been receiving even more carcasses than what has been reported. 

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Note: The FWS Scoping meetings start July 22 in Sacramento CA. The comment period (which should be extended for at least 2years), ends Sept 22, 2014.