Bloody wind turbine carnage: an emotional report from Germany
In the Märkische Allgemeine, March 12, 2018, as tweeted by Linda Rogers:
Wind turbine slays sea eagle
A sea eagle was slain by a wind turbine near Wernikow on the weekend. Workers at the wildlife sanctuary in Struck found the dead raptor. Whether it had a brood to take care of is unclear. In the state of Brandenburg 48 protected birds have already been killed by wind turbines.
Wernikow. A sea eagle was slain by a wind turbine near Wernikow on Saturday afternoon. The bird lay dead on the field when Uwe and Angie Löblich from the wildlife sanctuary in Struck (Prignitz) found it. They were actually looking for suitable spots to release swans. But they determined that the water was still frozen, thus deemed the area unsuitable.
Instead they found the sea eagle. The wind turbine had obviously hit its wing. It was broken, the blood still fresh. Had the eagle lain there any longer, scavengers would have eaten it.
Uwe and Angie Löblich from the wildlife sanctuary in Struck with the eagle found near Wernikow. Source: Björn Wagener
Ornithologist Jürgen Kaatz: Dangerous turbulence from the blades
Wind turbines always spell doom for raptors and storks. “They perceive the blades to be a veil,” says ornithologist Jürgen Kaatz. They cannot judge the speed of the blades at the tips. But the vortices are also dangerous – air turbulence behind the turning blades.
According to Kaatz, the donor card for the wildlife sanctuary of the state of Brandenburg points out that currently 144 sea eagles have been killed by wind turbines (as at January 11, 2018). Brandenburg claims the inglorious top position with 48 dead sea eagles. To compare: in Mecklenburg Vorpommern there are 39; in Schleswig Holstein 37. “These are only the official numbers. One can assume unreported cases,” says ornithologist Jürgen Kaatz.
The Löblichs confirm this: Every year they discover one or two wind turbine bird fatalities. How many birds are found and not reported or dragged off by scavengers no-one knows.
The brood would starve
It’s possible the slain sea eagle near Wernikow already had a brood to provide for. That cannot be determined with certainty. The male bird was not banded, but judged to be about four years old – just on the cusp of breeding maturity. Kaatz hopes that the bird had no young to feed, because in that case they would starve. Sea eagles breed as of mid-February.
According to Kaatz, Altkreis Wittstock is home to four known sea eagles. There could actually be six or seven. Eagles take a very long time to find a new partner, should something have happened to theirs.
Uwe Löblich: “You feel the animal’s pain”
Uwe and Angie Löblich know only too well the suffering that is behind the statistics. “I held it. And you feel the animal’s pain. It gets into your bones,” relates Uwe Löblich, when he had a stork in his arms whose beak was for the most part sliced off. Other birds were dismembered or had their wings torn off or their legs cut off. Some were dead, others half dead, report the Löblichs. Some injured birds drag themselves to the road, hoping to be found. “People should imagine that it was their kids involved. Maybe then they would wake up,” says Uwe Löblich. But as long the politicians do nothing, protected birds will continue to meet their death by the rotating blades.
Björn Wagener
Translated by FauxGreen
Kafkaesque: Lawless loophole lets wind company endanger human lives
Another Kafkaesque industrial wind turbine nightmare in Ontario. A regional airport (Collingwood), with an aerodrome close by (Stayner), and eight 500’ (152 metres) air-space-invading industrial wind turbines (wpd Canada’s Fairview Wind Project) to be wedged between both airfields, posing grave danger to pilots and their passengers—and the whole thing approved by the Ontario Liberal government.
What could possibly go wrong when pilots, flying visually without instrumentation (as is the case in over 90% of the flights at these two airports), have to negotiate a safe take-off or landing through a blur of Georgian Bay fog, or lake-effects snow, and an indiscernible phalanx of gigantic 50-storey-tall white windmills?
All eight of the planned wind turbines will “penetrate” the safe arrival and departure airspace mandated by Transport Canada standards.
The Collingwood-Stayner airspace is a no-man’s-land of regulation, a lawless vacuum with respect to wind turbine installations. Ontario’s Green Energy Act deliberately has no safety provision for wind turbine setbacks near airports. All eight of the planned wind turbines will “penetrate” the safe arrival and departure airspace mandated by Transport Canada standards, as prescribed by the International Civil Aviation Organization.
If the turbines are built, and they thereby are found to create an unsafe situation, Transport Canada could shut the airports down.
However, here is the kicker. Transport Canada has no jurisdiction over where wind turbines are located with respect to the air space of registered, uncertified airports such as the Collingwood Regional Airport and the Clearview Aerodrome in Stayner. But, when the turbines are built, and they thereby are found to create an unsafe situation, Transport Canada could shut the airports down. The airports, not the wind turbines!
In this case, there is a dangerous jurisdictional vacuum. Neither Transport Canada, nor the Ontario government, nor the local governments, which the Liberals’ Green Energy Act stripped of their planning powers, have any legal say over the aeronautically-safe siting of wind turbines at registered, uncertified airports.
Wind companies—often foreign-owned—pretty well get to do whatever they want.
Such is the looney landscape of Ontario’s sickly “green” wind energy program that wind companies—often foreign-owned—pretty well get to do whatever they want, aided, abetted, enabled, financially rewarded, and legally defended by the Ontario Liberals’ Green Energy Act and their kangaroo court of (hopeless) appeal, the Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT). Only two of the scores of wind turbine project appeals to the ERT have had partial success, with final outcomes still pending.
wpd Canada’s Fairview Wind Project between the Collingwood-Stayner airports is being appealed, with an ERT hearing scheduled for May 16, 2016 in Collingwood. What are the chances that the safety-minded appellants will prevail? The onus is on them to prove “serious harm” to human health. You’d think that this would be a no-brainer, logical, obvious. But the narrow terms of reference by which the ERT operates and the unfair burden of proof heaped on the appellants usually spell defeat.
For a mind-blowing overview of this particular Kafkaesque situation involving wind turbine approvals and appeals, watch the 30-minute media event held at Queen’s Park on April 21, 2016 (starting at 3:09). At the press conference, Simcoe-Grey MPP Jim Wilson, Kevin Elwood (the pilot owner of the Clearview Aerodrome), and Charles Magwood, area property owner, outlined chilling facts about the lawless loophole that could endanger the lives of pilots and their passengers, and potentially close down an economically vital airport and aerodrome for good.
The trio also discuss possible graft and corruption in this case: wpd Canada’s payments made to the Liberal party, followed immediately by government approvals for wpd Canada’s project, and wpd Canada’s creation of a shell company with no assets in order to evade liability for accidents and de-commissioning of wind turbines.
In Ontario: lawless loopholes, callous, criminal disregard for human health and safety, apparent bribes for wind project approvals, calculated liability evasion, democracy-robbing legislation—all for economically useless, environmentally-destructive, subsidy-sucking industrial wind turbines, ugly symbols of a bankrupt, immoral, dishonest, fake planetary climate emergency.
September 2017:
February 2018:
The same goes for Kevin and Gail Elwood, John Wiggins, and the residents’ group Preserve Clearview, after the Environmental Review Tribunal dismissed an application for costs related to their appeal of a decision to grant WPD a renewable energy application for the Fairview Wind Project.
FAUXGREEN 
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