Pennsylvania Game Commission Executive Director Carl G. Roe will sign cooperative, voluntary agreements with seven companies to avoid, minimize and potentially mitigate any adverse impacts the development of wind energy may have on the state's wildlife resources at a public signing ceremony at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, April 18, in the auditorium of the Game Commission's headquarters.

The 420 wind turbines now in use across Pennsylvania killed more than 10,000 bats last year -- mostly in the late summer months, according to the state Game Commission. That's an average of 25 bats per turbine per year, and the Nature Conservancy predicts as many as 2,900 turbines will be set up across the state by 2030. This is a bad time to be a bat.

WASHINGTON-Migratory birds have a relatively safe trek across the Midwest, but unless the government intervenes thousands of those birds could be reduced to puffs of feathers drifting down from the blades of wind power turbines, wildlife advocates say. The birds often fly headlong into wind power devices, leaving behind victims with "severed beaks" and "mid-body separation," said Michael Daulton, of the National Audubon Society.

SCIENCE, not politics, was behind Environment Minister Ian Campbell's decision to place the orange-bellied parrot on Australia's critically endangered list, the minister said today. The parrot, which played a key role in Senator Campbell's controversial decision to reverse approval for a wind farm in Victoria, was reclassified this week as critically endangered.

THE Bald Hills wind farm proposal that Environment Minister Ian Campbell has agreed to reconsider will be identical - in size and location - to the project he has already scuttled. However, the company behind the contentious 52-turbine wind farm in Victoria's South Gippsland will come up with a survival strategy in a bid to allay Senator Campbell's concerns over the fate of the orange-bellied parrot.

THE COMPANY behind plans to build a massive windfarm in Shetland intends to wait until next summer before submitting a planning application to allow a second study of the islands' peatlands. Viking Energy had initially hoped to have already submitted its planning documents, but the huge number of responses to a public consultation scuppered the company's timetable. ...During the initial consultation in spring this year, many local residents were concerned about the amount of peat which would have to be cleared to erect up to 192 turbines, each measuring up to 145 metres in height. There were also worries that disturbing the sensitive peat habitat could pollute burns and inshore waters.

Residents upset about recent state approval for a wind power project in a neighboring town have launched a petition drive to change the town plan to prohibit commercial wind power development. “This petition basically reinforces that we don’t want to look at the ones at the end of Crystal Lake, and we don’t want the construction coming through,” said Liz Butterfield, owner of the Barton Village Corner Store. “And in the future, we don’t want wind development in the town of Barton.” ...“I think a 420-food wind tower at the end of a state park is a travesty,” Butterfield said.

Ed Jasulevicz had a point to prove when he donated the framed photograph he shot at Meadow Run Lake to the township in May. His point? Bald eagles are here. If anyone didn't believe him, he needs only to look at the 12-by-14-inch framed picture of a bald eagle sitting on the iced lake that now hangs in the municipal office. "Oh, they're here," Jasulevicz said later. "You'll see the eagles flying around by the water. We see lots of hawks by the lake." The controversy over the bird started brewing during township meetings months earlier. Some residents disputed eagles are anywhere near the township. Other residents debated wind farms and whether the turbines would harm eagles or other birds. The Pennsylvania Game Commission is wondering the same thing. The commission is set to hire a new employee who would investigate mortality rates in birds and bats caused by wind turbines.

Windmills have also caused an influx of rats in and around her home, she said, because the turbines are killing the birds and hawks that feast on them. "I have trapped over 100 rats in and around my house in the last year and a half," Manley said. "We celebrate when we see a hawk. We used to see them all the time."

A surge of opposition has diverted a plan to put wind-powered turbines on the Point Pelee peninsula. Boris Vondrus of Advantis Energy confirmed on Monday his company will respect the wishes expressed quite passionately at a Saturday night public meeting and look for a more bird-friendly location for the turbines. “We think we can find a solution a lot of people will be positively pleased with.”

Last week, the State Corporation Commission granted conditional approval for the company to build up to 20 turbines, each about 400 feet tall, on Red Oak Knob and Tamarack Ridge near the West Virginia border. ...McBride's project faced considerable opposition from environmentalists. It was widespread among residents who see Highland County as a pristine rural area and "a sort of last frontier," Sullenberger said. The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries summarized the opposition in a September 2006 letter to the SCC. "We support the use of alternative energy sources, including wind energy" the DGIF said. "However, we feel this project presents an unacceptable risk to wildlife."

An alpine wilderness in northern B.C. that's critical habitat to a herd of threatened mountain caribou is being proposed as the site for hundreds of industrial wind turbines. Aeolis Wind Power Corp. based at Sidney on Vancouver Island has provided the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office with draft terms of reference for its 1,000-megawatt Hackney Hills wind farm, about 45 kilometres northwest of Hudson's Hope. ..."Global warming is being used as a Trojan horse to justify all manner of high-impact energy projects, and Hackney Hills is a prime example," said Wayne Sawchuk, an award-winning Peace Valley conservationist and member of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society board.

A state Public Service Commission hearing examiner has recommended approval of a western Maryland wind power project - but with environmental restrictions that the developer has said could force it to reconsider. The proposed order will become final on November 30th unless it is appealed before then.

MONTPELIER, Vt. --A company's bid to build a wind farm atop a remote Northeast Kingdom mountain was rejected by the Public Service Board on Monday because of concerns about how the turbines would affect birds and bats.

"All these species have come under increasing pressure from fishing, sand and gravel dredging, oil and gas extraction, wind-farm construction and other uses. There is almost nowhere in our seas that has not been damaged in some way."