Government
bureaucrats delay life-saving road projects, but let wind turbines butcher bats
By Paul Driessen
and James H. Rust
Georgia residents recently learned
that a rare bat has stalled state highway improvements.
The May 2012 sighting of an endangered Indiana brown bat in a northern Georgia
tree has triggered federal regulations requiring that state road projects not
“harm, kill or harass” bats.
Even the
possibility of disturbing bats or their habitats would violate the act, the
feds say. Therefore, $460 million in Georgia road projects have been
delayed for up to eighteen months, so that “appropriate studies” can be
conducted. The studies will cost $80,000 to $120,000 per project, bringing the
total for all 104 road project analyses to $8-12 million, with delays adding
millions more.
Bats are vital to our ecology, agriculture
and health. A single colony of 150 big brown bats can consume up to 1.3 million flying insect pests per
year, Dr. Justin Boyles and other scientists point out, preventing crop damage
and eradicating countless mosquitoes. If Indiana
bats are expanding their range from Tennessee
into Georgia,
that could be good news.
“White nose
syndrome” is impacting populations of hibernating bats in caves all over the Eastern USA. The infectious disease is probably fungal in
origin, these scientists say, and the loss of North
America’s bats to WNS could cost farmers $4-53 billion per year –
and let mosquitoes proliferate.
At first blush,
then, the delay-and-study decision by the US
and Georgia Departments of Transportation (DOT) and
US Fish and Wildlife Service to protect these voracious furry flyers makes
sense. (The FWS enforces the Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act
and similar laws.)
However, the Georgia bat
study action is akin to obsessing about a cut finger, while ignoring cancer.
The schizophrenic decision underscores how environmental concerns, DOT actions
and federal threats to impose penalties or withhold highway funds too often
seem to reflect ideologies, agendas and politics, rather than science or actual
risks of harming a species.
It’s true that Peach State
highway projects could conceivably affect bat colonies or daytime rest periods
for these nocturnal creatures, to some small degree. But the road work will
reduce accidents and crash-related deaths – and delays will likely result in
more injuries and fatalities.
Meanwhile, other
human activities are decimating bat populations all over America. But
environmental groups remain silent, and state and federal wildlife “guardians”
do little to stop the carnage. How is that possible?
The exempted activities involve heavily subsidized wind turbines
that generate expensive, intermittent electricity and require “backup”
hydrocarbon-fueled power plants for some 80% of their rated or “nameplate”
capacity.
A US Geological Survey report investigated
the causes and consequences of bat fatalities around the
world. Other analyses have addressed the violent effects that
wind turbines have on bats, which are vulnerable because turbines are
especially busy at night, when bats are everywhere but electricity demand is at
its lowest. Bats are struck by blades traveling 100-200 mph at their tips or
felled by “barotrauma,” sudden air
pressure changes that explode their lungs, as explained in a 2008 Scientific
American article “On a wing and low air: The surprising way
wind turbines kill bats.”
Supposedly “eco-friendly” wind turbines in
the Mid-Atlantic Highlands kill tens of thousands of bats
annually. The Fowler Ridge and
Meadow Lake
facilities in northwestern Indiana already
have 475 gigantic turbines on 75,000 acres; an additional 150 wind turbines are
planned; and all are in the middle of prime Indiana bat habitat.
Even worse, long after the slaughter began,
the USFWS is evaluating whether to grant Fowler Ridge a 22-year “incidental take” permit, so that the
turbines can continue decimating bats – and the operators can continue being
exempted from laws and penalties that apply to everyone else.
Of course, bats aren’t the only victims.
Numerous rare, vital and endangered bird species are also at risk from wind
turbines – including whooping
cranes, hawks, falcons, and bald and golden
eagles.
To minimize public outrage over the
eco-slaughter, Fish and Wildlife has changed its census methods for “whoopers” (to
make it harder to calculate how many cranes have “gone missing” along their
turbine-dotted Alberta-to-Texas migratory corridor); allows wind facility
operators to use
search methods that ensure that most dead and injured birds (and bats) will
never be found; initiated a process to issue 30-year “incidental take” permits
for killing bald and
golden eagles; and refused to prosecute wind
facility operators for annihilating birds and bats.
The proposed New Era Wind Farm in Minnesota will likely kill 8-14 bald eagles annually. It is yet another example of serious environmental
impacts overlooked in the quest to “go green” and meet state “renewable” energy
mandates – as though this wildlife destruction is “sustainable” or
“acceptable.”
Projects like New
Era or Shepherds Flat in Oregon
also mean a person could be fined or jailed for possessing a feather from a
bald eagle decapitated by a wind turbine – but the turbine operator would get
off scot free.
A 2012 Spanish
Ornithological Society study and 1993 studies in Germany and Sweden found
that a typical wind turbine kills 333-1,000 birds and bats annually in Spain,
up to 309 birds per year in Germany, and as many as 895 birds and bats in
Sweden. World Council for Nature chairman Mark Duchamp estimates that turbines
kill twice as many bats as birds. That means the more than 40,000 turbines
operating in the United
States, often in or near important habitats,
could easily be killing 13 million to 39
million birds and bats every year!
And yet, most environmentalist groups say
nothing, and the Fish and Wildlife Service does nothing.
However, Georgia
taxpayers must pay millions for bat studies – enriching researchers and
reducing taxpayer wealth – to ensure that road projects do not disturb the
flying mammals. Meanwhile, the state’s drivers and passengers must wait years
for safety and other improvements to their highways.
Ironically, Indiana bats that are to be studied and
protected in Georgia could get chopped in half en route by “Cuisinarts of
the air” that Uncle Sam considers so holy the turbines must be safeguarded
against endangered species laws, regardless of environmental costs.
Far too many other health, environmental and economic impacts
are routinely ignored by developers and regulators alike, where wind turbines
are concerned. That cannot continue.
As summer approaches, Americans should also consider
what life will be like when windmills cause bat populations to
crater. Freed of their natural predators, mosquitoes will thrive, and they
have a much more unquenchable thirst for human blood than do bats of folklore
and Dracula tales.
It’s high time
that people’s safety – and truly devastating impacts on important bird and bat
species – stopped taking a back seat to political agendas, crony corporatism
and folklore environmentalism. It’s no longer acceptable to paraphrase Joseph
Stalin’s obscene axiom, and say: A single bird or bat death is a tragedy. A
million deaths is a statistic.
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