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Impact on Birds or Oregon
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Let's look at Bird Island off the coast of Marion in the center of Buzzards Bay, and what towns around the bay have plans for commercial wind turbines. ...In several years, Bird Island, the largest nesting area of roseate terns in North America, will be surrounded by commercial wind turbines.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service just completed a 97-page "biological opinion" that the 130-wind turbine project off Cape Cod will not harm the Roseate Terns. ...In several years Bird Island, the largest nesting area of Rosate Terns in North America in Buzzards Bay, will be surrounded by commercial wind turbines.
It is time for Ontario to work with citizens and environmental specialists to establish guidelines for the careful development of wind energy (Who Could Object To Wind Power? - Nov. 25). There are some places where wind turbines simply don't belong. ...Build wind developments in the wrong places and the environment will be collateral damage.
The most important factor to consider when evaluating the environmental impact of wind generation is that the power source is inconsistent and intermittent. This variability can present substantial challenges to incorporating large amounts of wind power into a grid system, since to maintain grid stability, energy supply and demand must remain in balance.
In order to integrate wind energy, utility companies must provide a power load to meet the base requirements of the population.
Also filed under [
Energy Policy|
Oregon]
This afternoon, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors will have a hearing concerning the Hatchet Ridge Wind project. The board's decision will have a significant impact on birds living in and migrating through the West. The Board of Supervisors has not been given the knowledge to make a proper decision on the project. ...The wind power industry learned a lesson from the astounding number of bird kills at Altamont Pass. Instead of pursuing better wind turbine designs that would limit bird kills, it chose a path of cover-up and lies. Today many wind turbine sites have limited access and workers will lose their jobs if they disclose the truth.
Wind power is one of the solutions to our energy needs both here in Oklahoma and beyond, as well as providing a new industry and the jobs that support it. ...Also noteworthy is the potential for wind energy to be not so green after all. Wind farms, like any type of development, built on the wrong site can have a negative impact on the environment. Strides toward solving one conservation problem should not inadvertently cause another.
This is the first breeding success at this site in 11 years. The parent eagles must have been pampered with plenty of live rabbits to make sure this would happen. All in all, two million pounds have been spent to produce a "success story" at Beinn an Tuirc. So much money is at stake here: the approval of hundreds of wind farms where eagles fly, in Scotland and in the world, hinge upon this kind of favourable publicity.
Whether the reports of health hazards are true or not is almost irrelevant. Just the fact that many people are truly concerned about the potential health effects of living near a wind farm, or the electromagnetic radiation from high voltage electrical wires, is reason enough to try to avoid buying a property that is close to power lines. It's a simple law of economics: As demand for a product goes down, so does its price. When you have a certain number of people avoiding a certain property, for whatever reason, the price of that property will be negatively affected.
I am extremely concerned at the detrimental impact the construction of wind turbines on the land adjacent to High Elms Lane, Benington could have on wildlife.
It is well known locally that this site supports a large and varied wildlife and many of the species are of national and international importance.
It has taken a long time and sympathetic farming to encourage so many species to thrive in this area. A total of 26 mammal species (not counting bats) and 75 bird species have been recorded around the proposed wind farm, along with various amphibians and reptiles.
There is a face-off brewing between two federal agencies over the fate of birds in Nantucket Sound, centering on the Cape Wind energy project. At issue is whether the U.S. Minerals Management Service defers to the cautionary advice of its expert peer, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, or will it ramrod the Cape Wind project forward, driven by political considerations? ...In the apparent hurry to permit the Cape Wind project this year, Minerals Management seems poised to ignore the Fish & Wildlife Service. Citizen action is needed to get the message across to Minerals Management: "Proceed with caution. Do not play 'wind turbine Russian Roulette' with endangered species. Move Cape Wind elsewhere, out of harm's way!"
The "Birds, fish may like wind farm" article on Monday 11 was poorly researched.
It has been well-documented that thousands of birds (from large raptors to small warblers) are killed by land-based wind turbines in the western U.S. each year. And many species of migrating birds using the Atlantic Flyway cross Delaware Bay between southern New Jersey and Delaware every fall and spring. Neither of these facts was mentioned in the article.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first proposal by any company to site wind turbines on the Kittatinny Ridge or Blue Mountain ...As an ornithologist involved in raptor migrations and hawk watching along the Kittatinny Ridge or Blue Mountain, and author of several books, I am unconditionally opposed to the installation of all wind turbines on this internationally famous, and vitally important, raptor migration corridor.
Highland New Wind Development (HNWD), developer of the proposed 20-turbine ridgeline wind project in Highland County, Virginia, has taken its search for investors to extremes, posting a website entitled: "The Greenest Windfarm in the World." ...This greenest-of-all posturing puts a new spin on the permit conditions imposed by the State Corporation Commission (SCC). Although potential investors will want to know why the SCC imposed precedent-setting wildlife monitoring conditions on the project, this critical information is missing from the HNWD website. Most of the extensive record, however, including expert reports and testimony submitted to the SCC, is provided here on the Virginia Wind website.
Call me crazy, but maybe it would be prudent to stop mandating (not to mention subsidizing and incentivizing) massive wind-energy development and start working out the kinks in wind-energy technology while we figure out what role wind should play in the energy-supply mix. Maybe examine whether wind energy will ever be a reliable, affordable energy source before Congress and the various state legislatures declare it to be a winner, without knowing how things will play out. (Think ethanol.) If not, salmon are the least of our worries.
The statement that the project "is expected to begin moving forward soon" is incorrect, unless the reporter knows something I do not.
The Public Service Board's decision is pending this fall but a number of interveners are currently fighting the project before the PSB, including Save Vermont Ridgelines.
Should this project be approved, one of the largest bear habitats in Vermont will be destroyed. As this is the first wind project proposed on national forest land, it will pave the way for similar projects in other national forests, such as those currently proposed in Virginia, West Virginia, and Michigan.
There are mornings when I step outside in my Greece housing tract and all is calm and tranquil. But when I arrive at Ontario Beach, the wind is literally howling in off the lake.
And that, in a nutshell, is why many birders are uneasy, to say the least, about energy-generating wind turbines.
The lakeshore is one of the very best places to look for birds because it is a key migration corridor for everything from geese to hawks to songbirds. But it is also one of the most promising places for wind turbines because of the unobstructed onshore breezes.
And so the big question: If turbines are built along the lakeshore, how many of those migrating birds will collide with them and be killed?
Introducing a few mountain hares near Beinn an Tuirc wind farm, at a cost of £30 each, is certainly a cost-effective way of getting good publicity for ScottishPower (your report, 24 March), but the question is will it do anything for the resident pair of golden eagles? ...Put simply, a well-located wind farm poses little danger to rare birds, but I have seen no evidence to suggest mitigation is effective, except of course in generating good PR.
Also filed under [
Impact on Birds|
UK]
There are those who don't like wind farms because of the unsightly tall turbines that are erected. There are those who don't like wind farms because larger groups of the wind turbines can require new electric transmission lines to be constructed, which also are unsightly and controversial.
The latest strike against wind farms came this past week when the United States Fish and Wildlife Service said wind turbines are the latest serious threat against whooping cranes. Whooping cranes are protected by the federal Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty. ...The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates as many as 40,000 turbines may be erected in the U.S. Section of the whooping crane's 200-mile wide migration corridor from Canada to Texas.
Britian's biggest conservation charity, the Royal Society fir the Protection of Birds, announced Wednesday (February 20) that is was about to start issuing maps of important bird-flight routes in the North of England to help planners decide the future sites of wind farms.
The first map will cover Cumbria with others on Morecambe Bay and the Lancashire coast to follow. ...
We could get these monsters in the Dales because we are ordered to have them by the European Union. Its bureaucrats never listen to what people say because they consider us a mere nuisance. But they do pay attention to the environmentalists. With a bit of luck, the RSPB will say that these plans would cause too much bird kill - and we Dalesfolk could be saved!