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. 

By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times 

May 10, 2013, 8:10 p.m. 

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.

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Wind Farms Kill Thousands Of Rare Birds, Never Face Prosecution

By Evan Bleier, Tue, May 14, 2013

An Associated Press investigation has discovered that hundreds of thousands of protected birds are killed each year by wind farms, but that the deaths have been kept secret and are never prosecuted.

An estimate by the Wildlife Society Bulletin supposes that 573,000 birds are killed by wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles. Each one of those deaths is a federal crime.

The Obama administration has never prosecuted a wind energy company for killing a bird, Fox News reported. The administration has prosecuted oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits and power companies when birds are killed by their power lines.

The deaths of the rare birds show there are certainly some downsides to using renewable energy. The amount of available wind power has doubled during President Obama’s first term.

"It is the rationale that we have to get off of carbon, we have to get off of fossil fuels, that allows them to justify this," said long-time environmentalist Tom Dougherty. "But at what cost? In this case, the cost is too high."

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