NextEra subsidiary “convicted” after eagle deaths
April 7th, 2022
A wind energy company has pleaded guilty after killing at least 150 eagles
What’s really odd about this is that most of the projects that I’ve been dealing with in permitting have secured eagle take permits — I thought. In this case, NextEra seems as a policy not to have take permits. HUH?
I am remembering resistance to developers answering questions about eagle take permits, and I think that it comes down to whether USFWS requires them to get one.
Here’s USFWS info on eagle permits here in the Midwest – it appears that there are only three eagle take permits issued for Minnesota wind projects, Red Pine, Getty/Black Oak, and Pleasant Valley/Grand Meadow:
Midwest Region- NEPA Documents for Eagle Permits
This seems to say that there are only FIVE eagle take permits? Here’s the application for one project that I’d worked on:
Black Oak/Getty Wind Farm Eagle Take Permit Application
For the Freeborn Wind project, we entered information about locations of nests and photos of eagles foraging, nests and foraging territory being, supposedly, two criteria examined in siting of wind projects and consideration of need for take permits:
See Freeborn Wind ALJ Recommendation, and search for “eagle” in the Recommendation.
Methinks this will have significant impact, but sentencing a company to probation — but how does that work?
Incidental “take” permits are history – 2 year anniversary
December 25th, 2019
That’s an eagle who’d been feasting on the carcass in the foreground as I drove across 110th in Freeborn County. There’s a nest off to the right (west) a bit that the Freeborn Wind developers and Dept. of Commerce don’t want to acknowledge. Wind projects are supposed to be a ways from eagle nests and foraging grounds.
A CNN article today raised this issue today, near the 2nd anniversary of a tRump administration “clarification” that stated that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act does not prohibit incidental takes.
From that CNN post:
According to emails obtained by the Times, when the Michigan Department of Natural resources emailed the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service seeking clarification if it could cut down trees, they were told “The recent M -Opinion also removes the prohibition to removing trees with active nests as long as the intent of the action is the cutting of the trees (in this case for timber harvest).” The agency did lay out potential ways to limit the damage done to the birds and nests, but noted those actions were “strictly voluntary.”
So it looks like taking down trees with nests in them would be OK for right-of-way clearing, or removing “hazard trees” by wind project?
Wind and transmission projects in this area often, if not always, have required eagle take permits (how many Decorah eagles died due to transmission lines? Four, I think!). But with the tRump administration “deconstructing the administrative state” at every turn, well, guess what was issued? Open season on migratory birds. It’s the 2 year anniversary of removal of protections:
From this memo
For the reasons explained below, this Memorandum finds that, consistent with the text, history, and purpose of the MBTA, the
statute’s prohibitions on pursuing, hunting, taking, capturing, killing, or attempting to do the same apply only to affirmative actions that have as their purpose the taking or killing of migratory birds, their nests, or their eggs.
Yes, you heard that right, as of December 22, 2017, federal policy, interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, requires an take permit only for those activities that have the PURPOSE of “taking” a bird covered under the Act. So we won’t be seeing take permits required for wind and transmission projects.
And yet despite that policy turn around, he says things like this last week at “Turning Point.” He probably doesn’t even know that incidental takes are not an issue for wind projects:
But FYI, bird takes have dropped dramatically in technology changes since the days of the Altamont Pass small turbine bird blenderizers. With larger, slower blades, spaced further apart fewer birds die. But some do! Particularly an issue if turbines are installed in migratory pathways, or foraging areas. Hence the need for a take permit, for siting away from bird areas, an attempt to put a limit on kills. That bird kills have been lowered doesn’t mean there’s reason to eliminate the take permits, no reason to eliminate prohibitions. WHY?