Eagles beware!

There is a scheme afoot to build a wind farm on West Butte, located on BLM land near the north side of the Horse Ridge summit. West Butte is a golden eagle playground and feeding area. Every spring male golden eagles have used the up-slope winds of West Butte to soar and frolic, posturing to attract females in mating time.

Male eagles will soar upward on the strong updrafts reaching an altitude of 500 feet above the summit of West Butte and nearby Horse Ridge, then put on an air show that is nothing but spectacular to witness.

Wind farm investors are asking the U.S. Fish & Wildlife (USF&WL) for a permit to "take" eagles. "Take" means to kill.

According to the Associated Press, the West Butte Power project plans to retrofit power poles where wires are so close together that golden eagles can stretch their 7-foot wingspan and get electrocuted.

The Fish and Wildlife Service says retrofits would mitigate the loss of any golden eagles killed by the 50-turbine wind farm east of Bend. That kind of offset is allowed under rules adopted in 2009.

The permit would allow three golden eagle deaths over five years and require no net loss of the breeding population.

The big problem with that is that no one - either in the state or federal biological communities - has any idea of how many golden eagles there are in the state of Oregon. That's a mystery that Frank Isaacs of the Oregon Eagle Foundation, who just finished doing a 30-year study of bald eagles, has taken on.

Isaacs has formed a team of eagle-minded paid helpers and volunteers to try and get an accurate count in the coming years. Even with the best of conditions, it will take at least five years to come up with any meaningful data, and in the meantime, the wind farm interests are applying for a permit to kill them.

Wind farms have been killing birds and bats since the first wind turbine was erected in Altamont, California, along the Columbia River highlands and in other U.S. locations. Wildlife biologists keep hoping the wind farm industry will eventually find a way to steer birds and bats from certain death. But to date, as far as anyone knows, nothing has been accomplished - or if it was tried, it didn't work - and the destruction of wildlife goes on. It's the same in Europe; in Norway wind turbines are taking a terrible toll on the white-tailed sea eagle, the European counterpart of our bald eagles.

A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass, California, estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds - nearly all protected by the migratory bird act - are being whacked every year at Altamont.

On Aug. 13, ExxonMobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with crude oil or other pollutants in uncovered tanks or waste-water facilities on its properties. The birds were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which dates back to 1918. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees.

Altamont's turbines, located about 30 miles east of Oakland, Calif., kill more than 100 times as many birds as Exxon's tankers, and they do so year after year. But the Altamont Pass wind farm seems to have escaped the same threat of prosecution as Pacific Corp. and Exxon, even though the bird kills at Altamont have been repeatedly documented by biologists since the

mid-1990s. Why?

"The cumulative impacts are huge," said biologist Shawn Smallwood, one of the few recognized experts studying the impact of wind farms on migratory birds. "It is not inconceivable to me that we could reduce golden eagle populations by a great deal, if not wipe them out," he stated.

"Politics plays a huge role here," Smallwood said. "Our leaders want this power source so they're giving, for a time being, a pass to the wind industry. If you or I killed an eagle, we're looking at major consequences."

With big money in wind farms, it's going to be tough going for the birds and bats that have to face the spinning blades to make a living of their own.