Cars, cats and skyscrapers don’t kill Eagles, but 60 m wind turbine blades with their tips travelling at 350 Kph routinely smash them out of existence. In Australia’s designated National Park, Tasmania, its peculiar species of Wedge-Tailed Eagle is both rare and endangered.
Now it faces the existential threat of ever more and even larger giant industrial wind turbines.
Climate cultists claim to be in a rebellion against extinctions and, yet, continue to exhort us that the solution to the annihilation of species is an all wind powered future.
Well, in Tasmania it looks as if they’ll get their wish, as vast tracts of the Apple Isle get carpeted in hundreds more of these giant whirling wonders. However, those that actually give a fig about nature aren’t so happy with the idea of critically endangered species being wiped off the planet before our very eyes.
Wind industry a fatal blow to eagles
The Australian
Matthew Denholm
27 July 2019
A Tasmanian wind farm has killed three eagles in the past few months, and 37 eagles across its wider operations since 2002, amid fears 10 new wind farms planned for the island will cause extinctions.
Woolnorth Wind Farms Holdings’ two sites in Tasmania’s far northwest have recorded the recent deaths of two endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles and one white-bellied sea eagle.
These sites, within 5km of each other, as well as the company’s larger facility at Musselroe, in the northeast, have killed a combined 32 wedge-tailed eagles, and five sea eagles, since the first site began operations in 2002-04.
The recent deaths are a concerning development for Woolnorth, a joint venture between China’s Shenhua Group and state-owned Hydro Tasmania, which had not reported eagle fatalities at either northwest site for about a decade. They will heighten concerns about plans by Hong Kong-based UPC Renewables to build the southern hemisphere’s largest wind farm less than 25km away, at Robbins Island.
Bird experts warned the latest deaths raised concerns about the survival of threatened bird species as the island state braced for a wind farm boom.
“It’s very, very, very scary — wind farms are just bird mincers, eagle killers,” said Craig Webb, who runs a raptor refuge at Kettering, in southern Tasmania. “We have to do something to get on top of this.
“(An injured) wedge-tailed eagle that came down from … Woolnorth (wind farm) was euthanased about five days ago. They put their hands up to killing 32 eagles at Woolnorth to date, but we know it’s much, much higher.”
Woolnorth said the recent eagle deaths had been reported to authorities and the company had a range of “offsets” to compensate for such incidents.
“Protecting Tasmania’s environment, including endangered wildlife, is extremely important to Woolnorth and we work hard to minimise the impact of our operations,” a spokesman said.
At least 10 new wind farms are proposed or under construction in Tasmania, bringing at least another 500 turbines to coastal and highland areas, many of which are important for threatened birds, ranging from raptors to the orange-bellied parrot.
BirdLife Tasmania is demanding urgent adoption of “no-go zones” and holistic planning controls to avert an ecological disaster. Vast transmission lines associated with wind farms and other power infrastructure are killing significant numbers of eagles through collisions and electrocution.
Powerlines kill about 30 wedge-tail eagles each year, official data indicates. “The real number is way, way higher,” said Mr Webb, who has reached an agreement with TasNetworks to try to address the issue.
There are an estimated 350 breeding pairs of the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle remaining. Experts fear the wind farm expansion could drive the species close to extinction.
“It is already knocking on the door (of extinction) and with more pressure from powerlines and wind farms, it’s bleak,” said Mr Webb. “It’s big industry, big Chinese dollars … They don’t give a toss about the birds.”
The Australian
STOP THESE THINGS 
When are eagles hitting blades? Can they not see them during the day? And if most of the strikes are happening at dusk or when the light is dim, then put three or four UV LEDs on the leading edge so the birds can see where the flipping blades are.
The battle to stop the destruction of our environment and the harm to peoples health from this nightmare will only come when there is a rising up of the city dwellers who benefit far more from these things than those and their environment who have them as neighbours.
Yes, money is at the root of it, there is nothing any ‘Greenie’ can say that will change that. Of course if the industry was to be told they could not receive any more assistance and had to face strict Planning Regulations that ensured the safety of people and the environment and yes the need to ensure the energy will be there when it is needed and will not fail when the wind gets stroppy and stops blowing or blows too hard.
The end of last week where I live in SA we had a blackout of around 22 hours at the height of a storm with very strong VERY COLD gusty winds. This weather event should not have sent us into the dark ages, but it did.
Yes it may have been the weather that caused a problem, but if our energy infrastructure had had money spent on it instead of on subsidising and supporting so called ‘renewable’s’ , with cabling laid below ground instead of being left on rickety old poles subject to ANY weather event maybe just maybe we could have weathered the storm and kept our energy on. But as we don’t know what caused it and to-date there appears to have been no media acknowledgement of the length of time we were without power it could have been caused by anything – though Lake Bonney and Canunda Wind projects are along the same coastline not too far away, and at around the time we went black one of the Lake Bonney sites appears to have dropped suddenly to nothing and the others along with Canunda were struggling followed by major drops and rises from around 60mw and above to near 100mw then suddenly dropping to nothing until the Friday evening!!!!!!!
No its time this happened again in Adelaide and other capital or major cities and towns across the country then maybe we would get some action to bring this industry under control and stop the funding to it and the payment of compensation to those who have to suffer the indignity and financial loss of being without power in a ‘1st World’ country.
Batteries cannot be classed as base-load no matter how much the industry tries to say they are, and they didn’t save and wouldn’t have saved us from having to survive 22 hours without electricity when winds made the very low temperatures feel even colder.
Wind farms bring many gifts to humanity:
– Destruction of our natural scenary
– Regular power outages
– System black events
– Energy poverty due to exorbitant costs
– Economic loss, high unemployment and resulting poverty
– Polloution of groundwater
– Adverse health effects from infrasound
– Death to bats
– More bushfires due to longer transmission wires
– And now we have extinction to eagles
Can someone remind me why we buld these things ?
As someone commented here recently Serge just follow the money. Think “free” government money, it doesn’t matter whether it’s “free” pink bats or subsidised solar panels and windmills the outcome is the same economic, social and environmental disaster.
Reblogged this on ajmarciniak.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.
How unnecessary are wind turbines and RE?
Search for; are we in an ice age
Apart from science sites and vested interests, even ‘the know-it-all with faults’ site, technically admits we are mainly because of Greenland and Antarctica. In other words a complete absence of ice means we aren’t in one.
The other oddity is the Russian launched floating nuclear plant is by many media being described as ‘Chernobyl on ice’ even though under the USSR it was recognised as an accident waiting to happen because of its design. As to Russia’s being the 1st floating plant USA’s MH-1A is touted as the first floating nuclear power station according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built in 1967.
Also odd is advisor to PM John Howard, Dr Ziggy Switkowski said there were “appealing features in the designs of these new [nuclear] reactors” but solar and wind power paired with battery storage was the cheapest form of power; this in 2006 – before the big SA battery – must have had a funny crystal ball. He now supports Energy Minister Angus Taylor’s review; seems like a done deal in outcome: Outdated NBN anyone?