Illegal eagle deaths rising?

A conservation group is suing the Obama Administration. A federal rule is giving permission to wind-energy companies to injure or kill eagles for the next 30 years. According to the Huffington Post, the lawsuit was supposed to be filed on Thursday, June 19th in San Jose, California. The American Bird Conservancy, the suing party, claims the rule is illegal because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to evaluate whether this rule would harm eagle populations. The Obama Administration considers this rule to be an “administrative change” which bypasses a full environmental review.

“In the government’s rush to expand wind energy, shortcuts were taken in implementing this rule that should not have been allowed,” said Michael Hutchins, who is the national coordinator of the conservancy’s wind-energy program. According to an Associated Press investigation, there have been dozens of documented eagle deaths which are a violation of the federal law. To this day, the Obama Administration has only prosecuted one company for their actions against eagles, Duke Energy Corp., for killing 14 eagles and 149 other birds at two Wyoming wind farms.

In case you didn’t know what a wind farm was, it’s a farm made of up very tall wind turbines. The turbines don’t look like they are traveling very fast but they can reach up to 170 MPH at the tips. That is fast enough to create tornado-like vortexes.