Golden Eagle deaths at Pine Tree wind farm under investigation
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the cause of death of two more federally-protected Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) that were found at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power wind farm in the Tehachapi Mountains. Six other earlier deaths of Golden Eagles at the 2-year-old wind farm in Kern County were stuck by the blades of some of the 90 wind turbines that are spread across about 8,000 acres at the site. The Pine Tree wind farm is about 100 miles north of Los Angeles and about 15 miles northeast of Mojave.
The avian deaths give the Pine Tree site one of the highest avian mortality rates in California’s wind farm industry. The death-rate-per-turbine at the site is about 3 times higher than California’s Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, where about 67 Golden Eagles die each year. However, the Altamont Pass facility (photo above; located in Livermore‘s “backyard” 
) has 5,000 wind turbines, about 55 times as many as the Pine Tree site.
Golden Eagles are about 40 inches tall and weigh about 14 pounds. Their size and flight behavior make it difficult for them to fly through forests of wind turbines, some spinning as rapidly as 200 mph, especially when the birds are distracted by squirrels and other prey. Killing Golden Eagles is illegal under federal law, but so far federal authorities have not prosecuted any wind farm operators for violations.
A prosecution in the Pine Tree case could cause the booming alternative energy industry to revise its plans at a time when Kern County is creating boundary maps for dozens of wind projects that have been proposed to generate electricity for Los Angeles County. The Kern County Board of Supervisors adopted a renewable energy goal, one year ago “…of having 10,000 megawatts of renewable energy production by 2015. Los Angeles has a renewable energy goal of 35% by 2020.”
“The increasing golden eagle mortality at Pine Tree clearly points to wind turbines built in the wrong location,” said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. The utility needs to redesign its 250-megawatt Pine Tree network and Kern County needs to put a moratorium on construction of nearby wind farms to prevent deaths, Anderson said.
A coalition of environmental groups that includes the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Defenders of Wildlife recently sued Kern County to block construction of the proposed North Sky River and Jawbone wind energy projects on 13,535 acres of mountainous terrain adjacent to Pine Tree. The law suit claims that the projects would have an unacceptable effect on protected bat and avian species, including the Golden Eagle and the rare California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus), and on an important avian migratory corridor.
-Bill at
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