A Wyoming conservation group filed a federal lawsuit this month against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, arguing that the agency is illegally withholding records on bald and golden eagle deaths at three wind projects in southern Wyoming. 

Mike Lockhart, a biologist who worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service for over 30 years, told Just the News that the data the federal government is withholding could help assess the true impacts of wind energy in Wyoming on eagle mortality.

“We have no real idea of how many birds are being killed. There’s birds that I suspect are being killed that just disappear in the presence of the wind turbines. And I think the numbers are enormous compared to what we know right now,” Lockhart said. 

Blocked as "Privileged and confidential"

Earlier this year, the Albany County Conservancy, based in Laramie, Wyo., filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking records on the reported eagle deaths and injuries within two miles of Seven Mile Hill I/II, Ekola Flats, and Dunlap wind projects in southern Wyoming. 

The Interior Department responded by releasing 910 pages, while another 256 pages were redacted. The agency withheld the records under Exemption 4, which blocks the revelation of "trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person [that is] privileged or confidential." 

The group filed an administrative appeal in May challenging the exemption and demanding the department release all the data it has related to the request. The ACC received no response to their appeal, and so they filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 

Wind energy developers have been targeting the area of southeast Wyoming, which has some of the richest wind resources in the U.S. According to the ACC’s lawsuit, there will be 28 utility-scale wind farms operating across Wyoming by this summer, and some projects have over 500 turbines. 

“It’s not proprietary. It’s dead eagles,” conservationist says 

Anne Brande, executive director of the ACC, told Just the News that the ecological risks of so many projects make transparency in federal oversight all the more imperative. 

The law allows a certain number of eagles to be lost via a permitting system called the "eagle take." Wind farm owners collect records on bird mortality as part of the eagle take permits the developers are required to have in order to disturb, injure and kill eagles.  This data is public information submitted to federal agencies as part of their permitting, Brande said, and there’s nothing in those records that could be legally withheld under Exemption 4. 

“It’s not proprietary. It’s dead eagles,” she said. 

Birds just vanish from tracking

Lockhart has been tagging eagles in the area of the three wind farms and said that about half the known human-caused eagle deaths of the birds he’s tagged are caused by wind turbines. However, he said, this is just a glimpse of what could be a much larger impact. 

“That’s just a sample, but it’s a very telling sample,” Lockhart said. 

Shooting, electrocutions and road collisions are among the other types of human-caused deaths of eagles. He said many of the tagged birds don’t show up in the data he’s gathered. The tags will show birds flying in the areas of these turbines, and then they just vanish. 

“I'm sure that a number of those birds have been killed and are just not reported,” Lockhart said. 

This is why the data the federal government is withholding, he said, is so important. It’s likely that the “take” reports that are submitted to the Fish and Wildlife Service show that a lot more birds are dying than what he’s counting, Lockhart believes. That data could help fill “huge gaps” in the knowledge about the potential impacts of the projects on eagles, he said. 

Lockhart says she's a green energy advocate

Lockhart is not an opponent of wind energy. He said it’s an important tool in dealing with the impacts of climate change.  “I’m a green energy advocate, but just not here. And I’m not saying that because it’s my backyard. I’m saying it because of the enormous consequences of where they’re putting” the turbines, Lockhart explained. 

The area where these wind farms are being built is pristine habitat for a variety of species, particularly migratory birds that come down from Alaska and Canada through the area where the wind farms are located. 

“It’s a choking point. It's critical habitat, and it’s just being compromised,” he said. 

Golden eagles are especially vulnerable to the impacts of the turbines, he said. They don’t have the reproductive capabilities of bald eagles, which have bounced back from the brink of extinction since the 1960s. 

Declining populations

The birds are also at the top of the food chain, and their loss would have far-reaching impacts on the ecology of southeast Wyoming. Lockhart said there are indications the eagle populations are being severely affected by wind development in Wyoming. 

“Over the last few years, there's just been a massive increase in the number of wind turbines and what I'm seeing in the field is that there's just not very many eagles anymore,” the biologist said. 

Lockhart said the wind energy developers need to be more forthcoming with their data on bird mortality around their projects. 

“The companies are very good about bragging about the things that they're trying to do, but they don't disclose what's really happening on the ground,” Lockhart said.

The Department of the Interior declined to comment on the lawsuit.