Shocking new statistical evidence has emerged that suggests the golden eagle could be on a wind turbine-induced glide path to extinction in the United States. Eagle deaths due to wind turbines in the western US were increasing by around 9% a year from 2013 to 2020, but this annual increase leapt to 13% from 2020 to 2024, a jump of 49% in the annual increase in death rate. Bird maps are said to show that the relative abundance of golden eagles across much of their western range has declined and areas where declines occurred, “align with areas where the most turbines have been constructed”. There are fewer than 40,000 golden eagles in the US and the recent acceleration of wind infrastructure “could have a significant negative impact on the golden eagle population”.
This data and associated conclusions have been published in a new Elsevier paper written by a group of American wildlife conservation scientists. They used a Bayesian collision risk model and inputted widely available data such as the eBird abundance maps. The Bayesian model is widely used in collision risk assessment and uses objective observations and relevant information. For obvious Net Zero reasons there is little research on wind turbine wildlife carnage, although it is known that millions of bats and birds, along with a huge insect tonnage, are crunched by ever larger and more numerous wind blades. Large birds such as eagles that hunt moving prey and rely on wind currents to fly are particularly at risk and the scientists estimate that 80,000 raptors (of all kinds) are killed by wind turbines across the US every year.
The discovery by the wildlife scientists of a recent statistical jump in golden eagle mortality is particularly disturbing. As the graph below shows, the average number of estimated deaths had risen from 110 in 2013 to 270 last year.
The scientists note that golden eagles are particularly vulnerable to mortality from wind turbines since their predatory nature places them at more danger than scavenging birds. The eagles are a slow-reproducing species and it is noted that even low levels of additional mortality due to wind turbines may have a “significant” effect on overall populations.
The danger is only likely to get worse, even if Net Zero mania in the US starts to tail off in the new Trumpian political environment. Writing recently in CFACT, David Wojick says that the threat to the eagles is “potentially enormous”. Current wind power-generating capacity is 160,000 MW, but there is a queue of interconnection applications amounting to an additional 230,000 MW. Much of this, the researchers note, is within the western range of the golden eagle.
The number of turbines is showing a significant increase but the rising rate of eagle mortality is also due to the massive growth in the areas swept by increasingly large blades. With blades now being produced that are as high as the Eiffel Tower, this increases significantly the wildlife killing zones. The scientists measure this as “hazardous volume” and state that it rose by 198% from 2013 to 2024 in the higher risk areas and 119% in the lower risk zones. This translates to an increase of the potential killing zone during this period from 17.3 km3 to 47 km3. During this time, the number of turbines increased by 26% but the hazardous volume rose much more, by 171%. This figure alone would seem to explain the concerning recent jump in estimated fatalities.
Is it fair to suggest that the golden eagle might be on a wind turbine-induced glide path to extinction in its western US habitat, and potentially other areas of the world that are blighted by massive nature-destroying turbines? The answer is yes, the threat is real, it is undoubtedly growing, and it is ignored by mainstream media and political discourse. Many governing elites are fixated by the idea that windmills can power a modern society, providing clean energy and delivering a more ‘sustainable’ world. But it is becoming clearer by the day that wind turbines have a devastating effect on the natural world, killing significant fauna that could eventually threaten the survival of many species.
Few are more adapt at turning a blind eye to ecological destruction than the local Hesse Green Minister Priska Hinz, who stated recently: “Wind energy makes a decisive contribution to the energy transition and the preservation of nature. It is the only way to preserve forest and important ecosystems.” Possibly the cynical laughter would not have been so great if she had not made the comments defending the destruction of forest in Germany to erect a number of 240 metre high wind turbines. What could have been a dirty little secret instead attracted worldwide headlines since the clearing involving the destruction of a reported 120,000 trees in the forest of Reinhardswald, the setting for the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Worse, the turbines were due to be erected around the Sababurg ‘Sleeping Beauty’ castle.
Pierre Gosselin, who runs the German-based science site No Tricks Zone, was unimpressed, noting of green energy: “It’s not cost-free, it’s full of corrupt and unresponsive politicians who no longer care about democracy, and it certainly doesn’t make the environment better. It’s a nasty juggernaut of waste, fraud, corruption and ecological degradation – with dead birds, turbine vibration sickness, strobe dizziness and landscape pollution.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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And that’s why your not allowed near the base of wind turbines, so you cannot document the carnage! Teams need to get in to remove the carcasses on a regular basis.
If these urban explorers don’t seem to mind getting on to private property to look for ghosts why don’t they do something useful and film around the bottom of wind turbines and show the footage to the world?
“Anecdotal evidence from the US and Australia also suggests that windfarm operators often hide the bodies of dead birds in order to avoid being fined.”
“Another trick, described by Wiegand, is for windfarm developers to confine their searches to limited areas directly below the wind turbines – leading to official body counts that grossly underestimate the true extent of bird mortality.” [because the dead and wounded birds are often flung hundreds of feet away from the wind turbine by the force of the blades]
from
RSPB makes a killing… from windfarm giants behind turbines accused of destroying rare birds | Daily Mail Online
The sneaky f-ing rats!
They also use the excuse that domestic cats kill as many birds as wind choppers, so that makes it OK then?
I’d like to see a cat kill an eagle!!
… and cats don’t kill seabirds.
Save the Planet and Kill the American Eagle – Never used to happen with those evil coal-fired power stations, conveniently located near to centres of population and well away from the open country and wilderness, that the Audobon Society and Sierra Club’s planet savers profess to care so much for.
Once a windmill, always a windmill. The bigger the bird-mincer, the bigger the carnage. Go figure, green deviants.
If you killed a Bald Eagle, you go to jail.
If the bird chopper mangles on average, 500 or more large birds per annum, including the bald eagle, nothing happens – except more choppers are built, and there is more corruption, payoffs, bribes and money changing hands.
“You’re just saying this because you don’t like windmills! You don’t really care for the planet and its wildlife!”
Since the turn of the century it appears that ‘facts’ have less and less meaning for many. ‘Feelings’ for a vocal minority, now seem to be the default..
This may be a reflection of lower education standards (or more precisely critical thinking abilities, in the Western world), or it maybe because people are becoming more insular and selfish due to the www.
All of this accelerated during Covid era, where Governments wilfully ignored inconvenient facts and then also criticised those who presented them. It continues with the patently false MM Global Warming scare and ‘men can be women’ narratives.
At some stage society has to recognise that empirical facts (which must always be open to challenge) have to form the basis by which we all live. Society can’t operate with a million ‘my truths’.
Golden Eagle Can’t Survive Wind Farms
Starlings can’t either.
‘Alarming’ decline of common garden bird: Starling numbers in Britain have DROPPED to their lowest number ever recorded, RSPB warns | Daily Mail Online
But this article from 11th April 2025 never mentions the fact that starlings migrate in vast numbers from Scandinavia to Britain, where they must cross the barrier of Wind Turbines on land and sea along England’s eastern coast.
Ok, just so I understand; modifications or work a house or church with possible bat habitations – absolutely not!
INstallation of massively expensive, hideous to look at and completely useless wind turbines across the country, certain to slaughter thousands of bats per year – perfectly ok.
Curious.
Yes, we have to kill them to save them….
A French windfarm in Provence has been suspended from operation for a year due to raptor deaths and I believe another is going to receive similar treatment that includes a fine. Raptors like bats sit at the top of the food chain and therefore have low reproductive rates compared to the likes of blue tits etc that are prey.
Well done to Chris Morrison and the DS for featuring this important new research. May I also point out an article by James Delingpole from 2013 on the scandal of the RSPB making quiet profits out of collaborating with wind turbine developers, and “The Greens who invaded the top of the RSPB”, listed in the article as:
from
RSPB makes a killing… from windfarm giants behind turbines accused of destroying rare birds | Daily Mail Online
“GOLDEN EAGLE: Majestic bird of prey with a wingspan of nearly 8ft that can fly at up to 150mph.
The RSPB says there are fewer than 500 breeding pairs left in the UK.” (That was in 2013!)
Climate vs. nature. That’s an interesting one.