American Bird Conservancy: Wind Power, Solar Farms Must Play by Federal Rules, too – IOTW Report

American Bird Conservancy: Wind Power, Solar Farms Must Play by Federal Rules, too

MasterResource: The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) has actively complained to state and federal authorities about a double standard applied to politically correct, environmentally incorrect wind farms and central-station solar farms cited in bird-sensitive areas. The letter below is the latest attempt of ABC to apply existing statutes to energy infrastructure.

Dear Secretary Jewell and Acting Manager Goldfuss,

2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the Migratory Bird Treaty, a landmark and unparalleled international agreement that has protected, recovered, and maintained abundant bird populations for many groups of birds, especially shorebirds, waterfowl, and herons, and has helped maintain the spectacle of bird migration throughout the hemisphere. Given current pressures on resources, habitats, and the environment, a new process for incidental take permitting is urgently needed to keep the Treaty’s implementing law, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) strong and relevant. The undersigned scientists respectfully urge you to advance migratory bird conservation by developing an incidental take permit process for migratory birds.

The MBTA prohibits take of migratory birds, but there is no permitting system in place to prevent avoidable and foreseeable incidental losses resulting from industrial development, or to provide for regulatory certainty for developers. Such a rule is urgently needed to help stem a broad-scale decline of migratory bird populations resulting in part from multiple sources of human-caused mortality. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has announced its intention to prepare a programmatic environmental impact statement (EIS) to evaluate the effects of creating a permitting system to reduce and mitigate for preventable sources of mortality. A draft EIS is expected this year.

The United States Endangered Species Act (ESA) includes an incidental take permit issued under Section 10 of the ESA to private, non-federal entities undertaking otherwise lawful projects that might result in the take of an endangered or threatened species.  MBTA, unlike the ESA or the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (BGEPA), currently has no provision for an incidental take permit for migratory birds.  Creating the same provision to protect migratory birds would enable managers to apply best management practices to reduce mortality and mitigation measures.

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10 Comments on American Bird Conservancy: Wind Power, Solar Farms Must Play by Federal Rules, too

  1. Wind farms have killed more birds and bats than any other man made disaster in the history of the world. They are totally uneconomic boondoggles, that require government subsidies in order to stay in operation, and they are terrible eyesores. Hopefully, President Trump will put paid to any more of these things being foisted on the taxpayers.

  2. Will the ASPCA ever step up and oppose the wanton animal slaughter caused by wind ” farms ” ?
    Attaching the word ” farms ” does not make it desirable, organic nor natural.

  3. Placing those idiotic wind farms in bird migritory flyways has done more harm than DDT ever did. Just more insanity from people who should be occupied with a box of crayons instead of serious descisions.

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