This majestic bird, our national symbol, had, for many years, been on the Endangered Species list.
Bald Eagles have been demoted, as it were, and as of June 2007 not even “threatened,” the next tier down in our scheme to protect animals in scarce supply. It is still a federal crime to kill one without a permit, however.
Unless,of course, the killing is done in the name of a greater good. As reported at the Heritage Foundation’s Foundry, that greater good is wind energy. Seems that birds, including the bald eagle, are killed by rotating turbine blades.
This should not be surprising; wind turbine farms take up a lot of acreage in order to achieve useful power generation. With lots and lots of spinning blades of avian death. While there are arguments as to the precise numbers of birds killed this way, I’d hazard a guess that the same level of bird deaths would doom any project related to extracting, transporting, and refining fossil fuels.
