Jim Wiegand
June 2, 2016
On May 6 2016 the FWS and Interior Department announced a plan that would set massive industry bag limits for an eagle population that does not exist. In the case of the golden eagle, most of this eagle harvest will come from eagles that nest outside the US.
Since 1997 when the FWS repository first disclosed wind turbines as a major cause of death to eagles, wind energy has increased its deadly footprint by more than 10 times into golden eagle habitats located in the Western US. The Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement created for the Eagle Rule Revision completely avoided the many thousands of eagle carcasses and autopsy records that exist from their repository eagles. Even so, the limited and filtered data provided by the FWS does inadvertently give us a glimpse at the mortality impacts to eagles taking place from wind turbines.