Source: BBC News
URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24719185
Date: 30/10/2013
Event: Golden eagles are "susceptible to being killed by blade strikes at wind turbines"
Credit: BBC News
People:
[Altered States: US scientists track what's killing golden eagles: BBC video feature.]
[Footage throughout of biologists fitting transmitters to golden eagles.]
Dale Stahlecker: It's a family of birds that also won its way into almost every human heart. They're just an amazing set of birds, and eagles are the biggest of them all. The primary idea is that human activities can go on, on and around golden eagles, as long as we don't start losing golden eagles at any rate.
Brian Millsap: Of the five issues that are probably the most important, I think one of the first is just having a better understanding in general of the population status of golden eagles. So, understanding the numbers, the population trends, reproductive rates, survival rates, causes of mortality - those are some of the most important pieces of information that we don't have. And that's exactly what the radio telemetry study that we're doing is aimed at getting.
[Caption: Golden eagles are a protected species in the US.]
[Caption: Native American tribes and some industries get 'take permits' under which killing a small number of birds is legal.]
Dale Stahlecker: So, by putting transmitters on these eagles, we can follow them, through their life or the life of the transmitter.
Brian Millsap: If those birds die as a result of West Nile Virus in a marsh in Western Saskatchewan, we know that and we can recover that bird and learn from it. So we have an opportunity to get a really unbiased picture of the kinds of factors that are causing the death of these eagles.
[Caption: Eagle deaths caused by wind farms have soared in the past five years.]
[Caption: 67 birds are reported to have crashed into turbines and scientists believe the true numbers are much higher.]
Brian Millsap: And it just so happens that golden eagles are susceptible to being killed by blade strikes at wind turbines. And wind energy is one of the priorities of the administration. So this project and other projects are being funded so we can learn more about eagles and eagle biology, to reduce the impacts of renewable development on the birds.
[Caption: The wind energy industry says farms are to blame for just 2% of human-caused eagle deaths.]
[Caption: More are caused by poisoning, collisions with vehicles and illegal shootings. Source: American Wind Energy Association.]
Dale Stahlecker: My hope is that we will get information from this study that will allow the Fish and Wildlife Service to make the hard decisions about permits for wind farms or not to permit wind farms in certain areas, for them to be able to predict comfortably how populations will respond to different activities, be it a take for religious reasons by Native Americans or a take by wind power companies.
Brian Millsap: In the end, you know, [what] we'd like to be able to do is assure the American people that, you know, this bird's going to be with us, we're going to make sure that we understand the biology well enough that, you know, what we do authorise is manageable and sustainable, and that golden eagles are going to be here for our kids and our kids' kids.