February, 2004
Subject: "biological significance" and wind energy impacts on birds
To: BURROWINGOWL@LISTSERV.UNL.EDU
The great conservationists Aldo Leopold once said that "to receive an
ecological education is to live alone in a world full of wounds."
Unfortunately, when one looks at the current pattern of growth and response
to impacts of the wind energy industry, it is clearer and clearer that even
trained ecologists are willing to overlook wounds, ignore them, and tolerate
incredible wounding of our environment. I include the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and its Migratory Bird Office in this assessment,
unfortunately.
I encourage interested parties to take a look at the draft record of a
recent meeting of the National Wind Coordinating Committee, in which the
issue of "biological signficance" was discussed and a proposed definition
was given. You can access this account at http://www.nationalwind.org and
more specificially at
http://www.nationalwind.org/events/wildlife/20031117/summary_bio.pdf.
There you will find discussion of the issue and the proposed definition of
how to determine biological significance of bird kills caused by wind
turbines. Here is the proposed defition (by Al Manville of USFWS with prior
suggestion by Dr. Dale Strickland of West-Inc., (a contract biological
firm):
a biologically significant outcome must have a measurable impact on the
population and/or its habitat which could reasonably be expected to affect a
population's finite rate of increase (lambda) or its stability, and as a
result influence a population's viablilty.
Thus, accoring to this definition of biological significance, the deaths of
hundreds of golden eagles and thousands of raptors in the Altamont Pass over
the past 20 years are biologically insignificant. That is, those
mortalities are considered biologically insignificant to the US Fish and
Wildlife Service and the industry and its paid consultants.
Apparently, as long as there are plenty more birds to kill, the kill itself
is biologically insignificant.
Yet, what if a population does decline or enters into decline from factors
other than wind turbine mortalities, yet also impacted by them? The reality
is that the science of popuilation viability has its own layers of
uncertainty and vested economic interests can probably always find their own
scientists to argue that no impact is demonstrated. And even when species
are in significant decline, as the California burrowing owl population is,
the State of California Game Commission has demonstrated an ability to
override the opinons of the state's top burrowing owl biologists and refuses
to protect the species by listing as a threatened/endangered species.
Now, we have evidence to suggest that perhaps one hundred and thirty five to
two hundred and seventy burrowing owls are killed in the Altamont Pass each
year by wind turbines in a species whose statewide population is already in
significant decline. Yet, to my knowledge, there are no population
viability studies of that population of burrowing owls in progress, and I
have seen no evidence of any plan to conduct such research.
And there is certainly no effort by the Migratory Bird Office of USFWS to
enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It is almost as if the wildife
agencies see their role as supervising incremental reduction of bird
populations until species become endangered, and then continuing to avoid
real protections as unfeasible due to economic considerations. But good
careers are made in monitoring, researching, and investigating how inaction
seems to produce nil results.
Sadly, there are those who have received the ecological education spoken of
by Aldo Leopold, who are perfectly aware of the wounds, but who seem to be
bound by careerism to minimize the effective medical treatment for those
wounds. An ecological education, unfortunately, does not necessarily induce
a productive ecological conscience. As a result, under the full supervision
of trained ecologists, ecological atrocities continue to occur and no doubt
will continue to occur-- after all, there is no biological significance to
all those fatalities -- by definition!
Stan Moore San Geronimo, CA hawkman11@hotmail.com