Obama / Wind Power: OK TO KILL CONDORS

I believe this is one you need to write to your congressman about.

Also, at this point, I'd like to take certain people to task: those who say 'power lines kill more birds than wind turbines.'

Simple question for such yokels: How the Hell do you think the minimal amounts of power from those turbines, GETS transmitted in the first place!?!

Link to original below.

From the LA Times:

Companies won't face charges in condor deaths

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grants exceptions to a wind farm and a building project in harassing or killing the endangered birds.

Federal wildlife officials took the unprecedented step Friday of telling private companies that they will not be prosecuted for inadvertently harassing or even killing endangered California condors.


In a decision swiftly condemned by conservationists and wildlife advocates, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said operators of Terra-Gen Power's wind farm in the Tehachapi Mountains will not be prosecuted if their turbines accidentally kill a condor during the expected 30-year life span of the project.

California condors were brought back from the brink of extinction a quarter-century ago and still cling precariously to survival. Federal law prohibits the harassment or killing of endangered species for any reason.

Fish and Wildlife also made an exception for the 270,000-acre Tejon Ranch Co., saying that the government will not prosecute if construction of the company's controversial 5,553-acre development of luxury homes, hotels and golf courses violates the harassment ban in the endangered species law. The exception will last for 50 years. The project is expected to consume 8% of the critical condor habitat in the Tehachapis, about 60 miles north of Los Angeles.

Fish and Wildlife Director Daniel Ashe said the decision reflects a difficult reality. The threat of prosecution jeopardized the construction of large-scale alternative energy facilities and real estate developments in the wild and windy places preferred by condors.

"This is the first time we've authorized incidental takes of California condors — and we're approaching them very cautiously," Ashe said in an interview.

"The good news is that we have an expanding population of condors, which are also expanding their range," he said. "We have to make sure that as the condor population grows, we are learning to work with local private businesses to fit a conservation effort into the landscape."

The agency invited other wind farms to apply for similar permission.