Like people, eagles benefit from clean environment

To Americans, the bald eagle symbolizes our freedom, spirit and democracy. With National Bald Eagle Day happening every year at the end of June, we are reminded of the need to do all that we can to care for and protect our national bird across the country.

Many man-made threats to eagles exist in the landscape today, including power lines, mercury and lead poisoning, and illegal shootings — with thousands killed annually by these sources. Further, according to most in the scientific community, the single greatest threat to them, and all wildlife, is climate change.

That's why National Resources Defense Council Executive Director Peter Lehner has said, "We need to move as quickly as possible to the clean energy future, and scaling up wind power will be a big part of the solution," and why ConservAmerica President Rob Sisson said, "Developing energy from America's abundant renewable natural resources must be our priority, not only for the tremendous economic benefits it yields, but because it's one of the best tools available to help conserve wildlife, including eagles."

All sources of energy generation, and human activity for that matter, have an impact on the natural environment. However, Americans are confronted with needing to make choices about how to generate the electricity necessary to power our modern society and doing so in the least impactful way.

According to the National Eagle Center, the overall impact of wind turbine collisions on eagle populations is small compared to other threats that eagles face in the wild. While unfortunate, eagle losses at modern wind farms are a rare and random event, with only a few bald eagles having ever been observed to have died in collisions with a wind turbine.

Studies of the life cycle impacts of the six major energy generation sources have shown wind energy has the lowest environmental impact of any form of electricity generation, as it emits no air or water pollution, uses no water in the generation of electricity and creates no hazardous or radioactive waste requiring permanent storage. In fact, pollution-free, renewable wind energy was built on a legacy of care and has expended significant resources proactively minimizing its impact on wildlife while representing an economical solution to mitigating the effects of climate change.

American wind power is one of the cheapest and most reliable ways we can rapidly reduce carbon pollution and solve the challenges of climate change. The American wind fleet avoids 127 million tons of carbon emissions a year, the equivalent of reducing power sector emissions by 5 percent or taking 20 million cars off the road. Wind energy is the single largest zero-emission, newly installed energy source for the past three decades. As it continues scaling up from more than 5 percent today to 20 percent of the U.S. power grid and beyond, the pollution savings will rapidly grow.

The wind energy industry does more to address its impacts on eagles than any of the other, far greater sources of eagle mortality known to wildlife experts. Wind has taken the most proactive and leading role of any utility-scale energy source to minimize wildlife impacts in general, and specifically for eagles, through constantly improving siting and avoidance and minimization techniques, and identifying options to offset the industry's comparatively minimal impacts.

In recognizing that some human impact on eagles is unavoidable, during the last two years the U.S. Department of the Interior worked with major conservation groups and other stakeholders, including the wind energy industry, to make available limited authorization, for up to 30 years, for the taking of eagles that is incidental to and not the purpose of otherwise lawful activities. The permit is available to all sources of human-caused eagle mortality including oil and gas development, electric utilities and transportation, and was designed to conserve eagle populations by providing for a net conservation benefit for an eagle lost.

Protecting and caring for our national bird is important to the wind industry, which is why we proactively work with conservationists and regulators to find ways to minimize and fully offset our impacts.

As we take a moment each year to celebrate Bald Eagle Day, remember, the American wind energy industry is doing its part to keep bald eagles safe while providing a clean, affordable means of generating electricity, which is one of the key tools to addressing the impacts of climate change.

John Anderson is director of siting policy at the American Wind Energy Association.

NOTE: This post has been updated to correct the following: The National Eagle Center name was incorrect; a sentence was edited to reflect that the center holds no official capacity for National Bald Eagle Day; a sentence on wind turbine collisions on eagle populations has been fixed to be in line with the text found on center's website.