At the request of the House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans, Eric Glitzenstein, President of the Wildlife Advocacy Project, appeared before the Committee on May 1, 2007 to testify about the issue of siting wind power facilities to avoid injuries to migrating birds and bats. Every year, thousands of bats and migratory birds – including eagles, warblers, and hawks – are dismembered when they come into contact with spinning wind turbines that are typically located along the same mountain ridges that birds use to migrate. The Wildlife Advocacy Project supports wind power as a clean energy alternative that will help in reducing the adverse effects of global warming. However, it is important to construct and locate these facilities in ways that take into account their potentially devastating impacts on wildlife. To date, federal conservation laws have proven inadequate to prevent such impacts, and hence the Wildlife Advocacy Project is urging a strengthening of federal regulation. To read Mr. Glitzenstein’s complete written testimony, click here.
WAP, with several leading conservation groups including the Friends of Blackwater, Center for Biological Diversity, and Animal Welfare Institute, has submitted comments on the Draft Voluntary Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines and the Draft Eagle Conservation Plan Guidance prepared by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). FWS had requested public comments on the two draft documents, which were developed by the FWS to identify ways to avoid and minimize wildlife impacts of land-based wind energy facilities, and the public comment period ended on May 19, 2011.
WAP’s comments provide a series of detailed recommendations for the improvement of the guidelines and their effective implementation. At the outset, WAP recognizes that preparation of the guidelines is an important step taken by the FWS to address the wildlife impacts of wind energy projects. However, a major shortcoming of the guidelines is that its provisions are merely voluntary, i.e., wind energy developers can choose not to adhere to the guidelines. Our comments examine this issue of “voluntary compliance” and urge the FWS to recognize that the best guidelines in the world are worthless if they sit on a shelf and are ignored by the industry. Accordingly, our comments focus on the legal authority of the FWS to make the requirements of the guidelines binding.
Further, WAP’s comments discuss the implications of the rapid proliferation of wind energy projects in the absence of mechanisms to analyze their potential adverse cumulative effects. Our comments explain that adverse cumulative effects of wind energy development can only be avoided through careful planning of the size and location of wind projects in relation to each other. Our comments also describe several mechanisms for federal agencies, including the FWS, to undertake an analysis of the cumulative effects related to wind energy projects.
Additionally, WAP’s comments address several important issues such as the need for developing a process to ensure the independence of biological consultants in project decision-making. In this regard, our comments provide several effective and creative solutions to facilitate a process where FWS and project developers can make well-informed and responsible decisions with full and accurate information about potential wildlife impacts.
For a copy of our comments, click here. More information on the guidelines can be found here: http://www.fws.gov/windenergy/index.html
On August 4, 2011, WAP along with a coalition of wildlife groups (the Center for Biological Diversity, Animal Welfare Institute, and Friends of Blackwater Canyon), submitted comments on revisions made to the Draft Voluntary Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines. As described above, in May 2011 we had submitted detailed comments on the previous draft of the wind guidelines; however in developing the revised guidelines, FWS had largely ignored and entirely failed to respond to those comments. Our comments on the revised guidelines highlighted the fact that FWS had apparently weakened the guidelines in light of pressure from the industry-dominated Wind Turbine Guidelines Federal Advisory Committee. For example, the revised guidelines require FWS to review wind energy project proposals within a truncated 60 day period. Further, our comments emphasized that the manner in which FWS is working with the Committee is a flagrant violation of the public access mandate of the Federal Advisory Committee Act because the public had not been provided with complete and timely information as required by the Act.
Thereafter, on August 22, 2011, FWS released additional proposed changes to the revised guidelines, recommended by several subcommittees of the Federal Advisory Committee. WAP along with other members of the coalition, submitted comments on those changes as well, highlighting that these were drastic changes that weakened the guidelines even further. In this third round of comments, we urged FWS to reject those changes recommended by the subcommittees that were adverse to wildlife interests, and to allow the public to submit comments on any such changes that it may consider adopting. We explained that the proposed changes are more likely to harm rather than help wildlife. For example, FWS would be placed in a difficult position with respect to enforcement action against wind energy project developers because the proposed changes would allow developers to merely document FWS recommendations and their own reasons for “disagreeing” with the FWS to show compliance with the guidelines. All in all, the proposed changes would give wind developers enough scope to come up with their own interpretations of the guidelines, and pressure FWS biologists that the project will proceed if FWS did not meet the arbitrary 30-60 day review period.
More information on the revised guidelines and the subcommittee recommendations is available here: http://www.fws.gov/windenergy/index.html
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