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Now many residents of this picturesque region are hoping the lethal raptors can bring down a much bigger quarry - a controversial wind farm project.
The presence of a nesting pair of golden eagles has been confirmed in the Hautes Gorges Provincial Park.
"This is the break we've been waiting for," said Jean-Luc Simard, mayor of La Malbaie and prefect of the Charlevoix East regional council.
The park is 15 kilometres east of a mountaintop near Lac au Sable - a parcel of crown land that has long been a popular fishing and hunting spot - where an energy consortium plans to build 34 windmills by 2015.
One of the smallest of the 15 wind farm projects to be built across the province, the Lac au Sable site has generated considerable social and political static since it was announced by Hydro Québec in May 2008.
What months of angry words and letters have failed to do, however, the golden eagles could accomplish in one fell swoop.
"The law on this point is very clear," Simard told The Gazette. "No windmill can be built within 20 kilometres of a golden eagle nest - period."
While the exact location of the nest is not known - and can't be revealed even if it is found, wildlife officials say, in order to protect any baby birds - government officials say biologists confirmed the presence of a nesting couple of golden eagles in the Hautes Gorges park in 2007.
It's the perfect place for golden eagles to live and flourish, said Claire Ducharme, general manager of both Hautes Gorges and the nearby Parc des Grands Jardins.
"There are lots of rocky cliffs throughout the park where they can nest (and) lots of open areas and game for hunting," she said.
She added that the park's rivers, deep valleys and 1,000-metre-high plateau - which offers an eye-popping 360-degree view of the region, helping to attract about 100,000 visitors a year - also offer updrafts that suspend eagles high in the air as they scan for prey on the sparsely vegetated heights.
There are about 65 nesting couples of golden eagles across Quebec, according to provincial wildlife officials.
Considered an endangered species across much of North America, golden eagles are protected from hunting and poaching in Quebec.
Provincial laws prohibiting windmill farms from being built too close to raptor nests were passed early this decade, after it was discovered that hundreds of birds of prey, including golden and bald eagles, were killed by wind turbines in California.
But an executive with one of the consortium partners that is promoting the Lac au Sable wind park said times have changed - and he questioned both the motives and timing of project opponents' cries to protect the eagles.
"Machines are designed differently now (to avoid birds nesting on them), wind turbines move at half the speed they used to (and) they are set much farther apart, which reduces the danger to birds," said Peter Clibbon, vice-president of the Canadian division of Renewable Energy Systems (RES), a British company that has built wind parks that generate 6,000 megawatts of power in five countries.
RES is one of three companies - together with Montreal-based Hydromega Services and French subsidiary EDF Energies Nouvelles - that make up the St. Laurent Energies consortium that is behind the Lac au Sable wind farm.
The farm is expected to generate 74 megawatts of wind power if and when it is completed by 2015 - enough to meet the average energy needs of 15,000 households.
From the get-go, the project has been opposed by local groups for both esthetic and economic reasons. "No one here is in favour of it," Charles Roberge, president of the UNESCO-recognized Charlevoix Biosphere Reserve, said in May 2008.
In addition to the threat against wildlife, Roberge believes the wind park will be a visual blight on a landscape renowned for its natural beauty - and drives a tourism industry that is the region's principal economic motor. "Basically, it's a stupid idea for this region."
While supportive of wind parks, Simard said the Lac au Sable project will generate few local jobs and only $50,000 a year in royalties for Charlevoix - a pittance compared to the potential losses if there is even a slight drop in the number of tourists to the area. "If anything," Simard said, "people here are more opposed to it now than before."
But Clibbon said the Lac au Sable site is perfect for a wind farm.
"We looked at several sites in the region and that was by far the best," he said. "The site we chose is mostly burned by forest fires, it is outside the tourist corridor, and the soil is degraded."
He said local business and political leaders, including Simard, were in favour of a wind farm in the area, and supported a rival bid that was rejected by Hydro Québec.
Since then, he added, they have worked to whip up opposition to the deal, poohpoohing its economic benefits and portraying it as an eyesore.
"We have done simulations of the view (from the plateau) and the turbines would look like nothing more than tiny blips on the horizon," said Clibbon, a mechanical engineer from Quebec City. "They would be far less visible than the hydro lines and forestry cutting that are already clearly visible in the area."
Clibbon also slammed the group's sudden concern for the nesting golden eagles. "It's no secret there's a nest there," he said.
But he said a golden eagle nest is located just one kilometre away from the Port Burwell wind farm in Ontario - offering proof that birds and wind farms can cohabit peacefully.
Serge Lachance, a senior official with Quebec's Ministry of Natural Resources and Wildlife, says the nest's presence is just one of many elements that will be considered as the promoter prepares an impact study that will be used as a basis for public hearings, which are expected to be held next year. The provincial government will give the project a thumbs-up - or -down - in the spring of 2011.
"The 20 kilometres is not a law, it's an administrative protocol," said Lachance, the ministry's regional director.
A Hydro Québec spokesperson said the onus is on the promoter to get the project approved and the park built on deadline.
For one of Quebec's leading wind-energy experts, opposition to the Lac au Sable project is an example of the social and political pitfalls related to sustainable economic activity and energy development.
"Nearly everyone in Quebec is for green energy like wind power," said Jean-Louis Chaumel, an economist at the Université du Québec à Rimouski.
"But when you put wind parks in areas that are sensitive (because of) high population densities or natural beauty, like in Charlevoix, you have the potential for multiple sources of social activism against them."
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