I wish I could write this story as a travel brochure for this gorgeous North American gem, but if the proposed prop-style wind farm is built here, right in the midst of migratory flyways and breeding grounds, there will be no reason to bring your birding glasses. Or your crab traps. ...Despite industry propaganda, bird mortality from such farms is alarmingly high, and worse, due to the placement of the farms, many of the casualties are endangered or protected species like Golden eagles.

Till now the developers have implied that it would be out of sight and (they hoped) out of mind. ...But this week we have discovered that the windfarm (if they get resource consent to build it) won't be so isolated after all. It will be "west of Brooklyn and south of Karori" so it will have many neighbours. One of its biggest neighbours will be the Karori wildlife sanctuary, which is worried that native birds could be killed by the rotating blades of the Long Gully turbines.

Construction of a wind farm at Logiealmond could have a significant impact on wildlife, according to opponents of the proposal. According to consultant ecologist Nigel Rudd there would be a knock-on effect to birds and animals in the area if the 14-turbine development went ahead. "Modification of the habitat resource could significantly alter the attractiveness of the site to certain species.

Jason Lowe, a biologist with the Bureau of Land Management's Eastern Washington office in Spokane, ...conducted two field surveys this spring and summer, which confirmed what he feared: The hawks are fewer and farther between. Where there were 17 nesting pairs in 1987 in the Juniper Dunes area of Franklin County, only four were spotted last year and just one this year. ...Wind farms are proliferating in Southeast Washington and Northeast Oregon, which is a concern, he said. "Information is not complete, but there have been reports of hawks being hit by the (rotating windmill) blades," he said. While ferruginous hawks are unlikely to nest on ridges where windmills are located, they typically forage for food over a 17-mile radius, and that can include wind farms.

Turbines already are taking a heavy toll in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Game Commission released a report last spring showing the death rate is highest for bats, which additionally face being wiped out by a mysterious phenomenon called "white-nose syndrome." The evidence has mounted since studies in 2004 showed 1,500 to 4,000 bats annually were killed by the 44 turbines on West Virginia's Backbone Mountain.

Wind energy has been touted as cost-effective to produce clean energy as well as jobs. That promise, along with new government subsidies, has helped wind turbines pop up on hills and fields throughout America. But not every environmentalist is happy about that development. Critics charge that wind-energy development can cause habitat fragmentation-a displacement of a species that can eventually reduce its numbers-as well as the deaths of birds and bats (a species that is especially vulnerable due to its low reproductive rates) that collide with the wind turbines' massive rotor blades.

Long Point Waterfowl is worried that the McGuinty government is flying blind when it comes to the development of wind power. The waterfowl study group has set aside $300,000 for a two-year probe of wind turbines and their potential impact on waterfowl in the lower Great Lakes. Long Point Waterfowl is undertaking the research to address gaps in its understanding.

Green power, green jobs, renewable energy collide with the Endangered Species Act in a proposed wind farm in Southwest Washington. The project calling for between 48-60 megawatts of power is proposed for 3,359 acres of Washington Department of Natural Resources land northwest of Naselle, Washington. ...The DNR has the power to stop the project if it deems the project endangers Murrelets.

Over the next several months Stantec will operate a number of radar units and arrays of digital acoustic bat detector systems at select sites located 6 to 20 miles off of the coast of Maine, covering a transect of nearly 150 miles from Casco Bay north to Machias Seal Island. Stantec scientists will be monitoring the data for information on the offshore presence or absence, timing, flight heights, and passage rates of bats and birds moving south during the late summer and fall migration season.

As the wind-energy industry continues to grow, state officials are developing guidelines to help wildlife and wind turbines coexist on the High Plains, a first step that may serve as a blueprint for the rest of Texas. "We're trying to get Panhandle-specific guidelines that would include the lesser-prairie chicken," said Kathy Boydston, program leader for wildlife habitat assessment at the state Parks & Wildlife Department.

Wyoming's wind energy boom is stalling amid growing confusion over state regulations designed to protect environmentally sensitive sage grouse and how those rules should apply to wind power projects. Houston-based Horizon Wind Energy announced last week that it is indefinitely suspending plans to build a 300-megawatt-capacity wind farm that would have occupied one of dozens of state-designated "sage grouse core areas" deemed essential to protecting the imperiled bird.

The Uinta County Commissioners voted unanimously to deny two conditional use permits that would have allowed an additional 120 wind turbines on Bridger Butte. Bridger Butte Wind Power and Bridger Butte Wind Power II, being run by Tasco Engineering, wanted to add the turbines in the general area of Bigelow Road, and extending southward from the current project.

Horizon Wind Energy has suspended development of the Simpson Ridge wind farm in Carbon County because of Wyoming's rigid position on protecting key sage grouse habitat. Houston-based Horizon is not scrapping the project, but is placing it on hold indefinitely, project manager Nate Sandvig said Friday.

Environmental groups in Oregon have united to oppose the construction of new wind farms in the foothills of the Blue Mountains. One county is listening to their concerns. Umatilla County Planning Commission members intend to hear an amendment to the community's Comprehensive Plan that could ban future wind power developments from certain areas.

Should the lesser prairie chicken become listed as threatened or endangered - and it's close now - there would be significant restrictions on companies hoping to plant towering turbines across a five-state region believed to have some of the nation's best wind energy potential. "We've never seen the likes of this," said Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wildlife biologist Heather Whitlaw, who is part of conservation efforts with the other states and believes the bird could be listed within two years. "Anybody who puts anything on our landscape would be evaluated in one form or another."

They used to mine coal in the abandoned town of Carbon. Now this patch of southern Wyoming is a battleground in the debate over what many hope will be the clean energy source of the future: wind power. At the heart of the dispute are plans to build a network of wind farms in the American West that conservationists fear could disrupt threatened habitat such as sage brush, a dwindling piece of the region's fragile ecosystem.

Today DNR has 24 active wind power leases in various stages. Five wind farms with 65 turbines operate on state trust land, all in Eastern Washington. The leases yield $670,000 a year. However, the DNR failed to consider whether allowing wind turbines on state land might conflict with the compact the state made with the federal government in 1997 when it promised to manage its land in a way that would minimize harm to threatened and endangered species. And Sutherland didn't foresee that some uses might not be compatible with the giant spinning turbine blades that feed renewable energy into the power grid.

Despite the pollution reductions, Elk River has had some unintended consequences for the landscape and for wildlife. To the developer, these slight, grassy hills looked like a fine place to build a wind farm. But conservation groups saw something different. What had been nearly 8,000 acres of low-impact ranch land in one of the most threatened habitats in the world was now sliced by 20 miles of roads, 100 towers, transmission lines and a sizable electrical substation. And that was just the beginning.

Project manager Nate Sandvig said Friday the company has decided not to submit a permit application to the Wyoming Industrial Siting Council based on the state's recent decision not to allow wind energy development in key sage grouse habitats. ... Earlier this month, Gov. Dave Freudenthal's chief of staff, Ryan Lance, said the decision not to allow wind energy in sage grouse core areas came after consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Bird and bat deaths caused by wind turbines will be the subject of a national study involving 30 scientists from universities, industry, government and non-governmental organizations.