Giving away the ranch: What the Roundhouse Wind Energy Project application tells us

My friends and I are amateurs at tilting at windmills on behalf of wildlife and recreation. We are concerned about NextEra’s Roundhouse Wind Energy Project slated to begin construction in August at the Belvoir Ranch, owned by the City of Cheyenne, and on adjoining private and state land.

The 120, 499-foot-tall turbines will be scattered over 49,000 acres a few miles west of Cheyenne, from Interstate 80 south to the state line and from nearly Interstate 25 to Harriman Road (Wyoming Highway 218).

The friends I’ve met with are the representatives from The Nature Conservancy, Granite Canon Environmental Committee, Wyoming Pathways and Cheyenne Mountain Bike Association. I represented Cheyenne Audubon.

We’ve missed opportunities to voice our concerns due to inexperience but met several times with Roundhouse project director Ryan Fitzpatrick, a Cheyenne native (I knew his fourth-grade teacher) and Fort Collins, Colorado, resident. He’s charming. But he works for NextEra.

He told us to present our “asks” on behalf of wildlife and recreation, but few were accommodated in the Roundhouse application to the Wyoming Industrial Siting Council, https://deq.wyoming.gov/isd/application-permits/ resources/roundhouse-wind- energy-project/. The hearing is scheduled for June 13-14.

Audubon and the other groups are recommending relocating six turbines in the southwest corner to benefit wildlife, recreation and safeguard adjacent protected areas: TNC’s Big Hole conservation easement, Red Mountain Open Space and Soapstone Prairie Natural Area (the last two in Colorado). NextEra is relocating one, T8, at the city’s request.

Birds, along with bats, are the wildlife killed directly by turbine blades. One year of wildlife studies show consultants found 34 bird species in the western part of the project, Belvoir, and 62 species in the eastern private/state land area. The eastern survey purposely included wetland and riparian areas; the western didn’t.

Studies just got started on the last piece leased from the city in December. Ironically, that’s the part of the Belvoir right about where Audubon, TNC and the University of Wyoming Biodiversity Institute found 29 species June 11 and 12 during the 2016 Bioblitz.

The eBird.org bird species list for adjacent Red Mountain and Soapstone Prairie combined is 144. Laramie County, where Roundhouse is located, has a list of 300 species for the last 10 years. eBird data is citizen science, “crowd-sourced,” with thousands of hours of observations.

The consultants did mostly weekly surveys of 60 minutes looking for eagles and other raptors. Only an additional 10 minutes was devoted to songbirds. Eagles have major federal protection including substantial fines. Songbirds have less protection, even before the teeth were taken out of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act by the current federal administration.

Low species counts mean we might not be seeing the correct number of species from Wyoming’s “Species of Greatest Conservation Need.”

We aren’t seeing more than an echo of the migration diversity that eBird.org records indicate. From 2009-2019 in Laramie County, eBird data shows a total of 76 different species observed in January. The monthly number peaks in May with 251, tapering off to 170 in June (nesting birds are hard to find), but rising to a second migratory peak in September of 217 species. You can also see the clouds of birds during migration from radar records found at BirdCast.info.

If the consultant’s estimate of 300 dead birds per year is based on their studies finding 34 species on the west side and 62 species on the east side, it’s low.

A description of methodology for counting dead birds after turbines begin operation was not available at the time the application was submitted. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s recommended two years of wildlife surveys are not going to be complete when construction is due to start. How can Audubon, an official party at the ISC hearing, make informed statements?

Cheyenne Audubon will ask NextEra to have the project operator consult BirdCast.info and determine what nights clouds of migrating birds are densest funneling up the Front Range and shut down the turbines for a few hours.

There’s no room here to discuss the eagle situation, but I trust the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to keep an eye on that.

The 2008 Belvoir Ranch master plan, developed with public input, called for limited wind development. Without that same extensive public involvement, the city chose to let NextEra’s turbines be spread across the entire ranch. The economic benefits will come at the expense of recreation and wildlife – even though those two, when handled properly, could provide similar economic benefits in perpetuity, compared to the wind development’s 30 years.

It would be so much easier to convince the powers that be of the economic value of birds and recreation if I had deep pockets.

Barb Gorges invites readers to share their bird sightings and stories. Email bgorges4@msn.com or call 307-634-0463. Her bird columns are archived at https://cheyennebirdbanter.wordpress.com.