The falloff in enforcement of eagle protection laws — which accelerated in the Trump administration and has continued under President
It comes amid growing concern that a proliferation of wind turbines to feed a growing demand for renewable energy is jeopardizing golden eagle populations already believed to be declining in some areas.
Dozens of permits approved or pending would allow roughly 6,000 eagles to be killed over several decades, government documents show. Most permits are for wind farms, and more than half the killed birds would be golden eagles.
The AP’s findings — that significant numbers of eagles continue to die while fewer criminal cases are pursued — underscore a dilemma facing the Biden administration as it tries to confront climate change. Pursuing that goal through clean power development is requiring trade offs such as more dead birds from collisions with wind turbines that can tower 260 feet (80 meters) with blade tips spinning in excess of 150 miles per hour (240 kilometers per hour).
“They are rolling over backwards for wind companies,” said
Companies often pledge to perform conservation work to offset the deaths. Some permits include direct payments for dead eagles — about
A pending proposal from the Biden administration would further streamline permits — making them automatic in some cases as they allow wind-energy projects and power line networks to harm eagles and disturb their nests.
Since retiring from the wildlife service, Lockhart has continued researching wind turbine impacts on golden eagles under a government contract in central
Turbines have killed at least six golden eagles Lockhart had previously trapped and tagged for research, including a male that bred successfully in five out of six years. The biologist said it was killed about two months after a wind farm in 2021 started operating about a mile from the nest.
CONFLICTING MANDATES
At some wind farms, companies have relocated turbines or reduced their numbers to minimize deaths. But Lockhart said turbines continue to go up in areas frequented by golden eagles, and the cumulative impacts could be disastrous for the birds.
Many more turbines are planned.
In
“They’re going to more than double the (wind) capacity and in doing that, the impacts on wildlife, particularly golden eagles, are going to be exponentially going up,” Lockhart said.
There have been a small number of high-profile prosecutions of wind companies that continued killing eagles despite prior warnings from wildlife officials — including major utilities Duke Energy,
At Duke Energy’s windfarms in
Eagle deaths at PacifiCorp’s wind farms continued, although at a lower rate, after it paid
All three companies subsequently received or applied for permits that allow accidental killing of eagles without penalty, providing they took steps to minimize the number.
Wildlife officials approved such permits for more than two dozen major wind projects across the country over the past several years, sometimes over opposition from Native American tribes that revere eagles.
Despite objections from the Colorado River Indian Tribes, officials approved a permit last year for Tucson Electric Power Co, operator of 62 turbines in southern
Gun Lake Tribe Historic Preservation Officer
Several major environmental groups lobbied the
“Part of the issue is that companies have generally not been requesting permits and they’ve been taking their chances and there hasn’t been a lot of law enforcement,” said
Under the Biden administration, he said, the wildlife service has “conflicting mandates: They are being directed to advance renewable energy and then they have obligations to preserve eagles."
Some conservationists say the changes as proposed are too reliant on companies monitoring themselves, with not enough oversight.
“It’s sort of doomed to failure if you don’t have objective, neutral people with expertise going in and doing the monitoring,” said
FALLING CASE NUMBERS
Violations of the Eagle Protection Act rose during the second term of President
Under Trump, new cases fell off sharply. At the urging of the oil and gas industry, utilities and other companies, political appointees in the Republican administration rolled back enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act — which protects more than a thousand species in addition to eagles.
A Biden order reversed the rollback. However, cases continued sliding and hit their lowest level in a decade in the Democrat’s first year with 49 recorded violations, after peaking at 232 under Obama in 2014. They averaged 67 annually under Trump.
The figures do not include most of NextEra’s violations because the case against the company — which involved at least 150 eagle deaths at 50 wind farms dating to 2010 — was not fully closed when AP submitted its data request.
In response to questions about the falloff,
Only about one in eight cases brought under the Eagle Protection Act from 2012 to early 2022 resulted in fines, probation or jail time, according to AP’s analysis. Those cases include golden and bald eagles harmed or killed and nest disturbances and the taking of eagle body parts, such as feathers.
Whether criminal charges are ultimately brought is up to prosecutors. Fines, jail time and other punishments are up to the courts and are outside the wildlife service’s control, said agency spokesperson
“Not every criminal investigation substantiates evidence of a criminal violation of federal law,” she said.
Wildlife advocates have long said that the agency's law enforcement operations are understaffed and underfunded. In its 2024 budget request, the service revealed special agents were at historical low levels and that 47 agents will hit mandatory retirement in the next four years.
'EAGLES FLY...BLADES SPIN'
While bald eagle populations have grown exponentially over the past decade, there are only about 40,000 golden eagles, which need much larger areas to survive and hunt on the same windy plains where utilities have erected thousands of turbines in Western states.
In the years since Duke Energy pleaded guilty to killing 14 eagles at wind farms in
At Top of the World, at least 56 eagles have been killed since it started operating in 2010. The 110 turbines were installed before the company had an adequate process for siting them to avoid areas with eagles, said company scientist
Several years ago, Duke deployed an elaborate, computerized camera system at the site to detect incoming eagles. A turbine in a bird’s path can be shut down within a minute to keep it from being chopped by a spinning blade.
Since the cameras were installed, eagle deaths have not stopped, although they declined by more than 60%, Sporer said.
“Today, we would likely not put those wind turbines where they are,” she said. “We are ... incidentally taking these (eagles) through otherwise lawful operations, and so it just so happens to be that eagles fly in the air and blades spin. And there’s inherently a conflict when you have both in the same location.”
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