Wind energy firm sentenced for killing endangered eagles — without a permit

After decades under threat from pollution, poachers and poisons, America’s bald eagle population has recovered, thanks in part to aggressive federal action. Now a new threat has emerged, also promoted by Washington politics: Windmills.

A green energy company has been found responsible for killing at least 150 eagles, including bald and golden eagles, highlighting the unintended consequences of relying on wind to generate electricity.

ESI Energy Inc. was sentenced Tuesday in Cheyenne, Wyo., for violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. ESI is a subsidiary of

NextEra Energy Inc. ESI owns other companies, many of which operate wind energy generation facilities throughout the United States, including in Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, North Dakota and Michigan.

Ironically, the company’s crime wasn’t killing the endangered birds, but doing so without having the proper permits.

“This whole episode illustrates that the wind industry is a major killer of birds — including bald eagles and golden eagles and bats — but the government lets it happen as long as they’ve filled out the paperwork and gotten the permit to do so,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and the Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington.

ESI pleaded guilty to three counts of violating the MBTA, each based on the documented deaths of golden eagles due to blunt force trauma from being struck by a wind turbine blade at a particular facility in Wyoming or New Mexico, where ESI had not applied for the necessary permits.

“ESI acknowledged that at least 150 bald and golden eagles have died in total since 2012, across 50 of its 154 wind energy facilities,” the Department of Justice said in a statement. “And 136 of those deaths have been affirmatively determined to be attributable to the eagle being struck by a wind turbine blade.”

The court sentenced ESI to a fine of $1,861,600, restitution in the amount of $6,210,991, and a five-year period of probation during which it must follow an Eagle Management Plan.

Rebecca Kujawa, president of NextEra Energy Resources and NextEra Energy Partners, disputed the DOJ’s handling of this case, complaining the federal government has chosen to “criminalize unavoidable accidents related to collisions of birds into wind turbines” while at the same time failing to address other activities that result in far greater numbers of accidental eagle and other bird mortalities.

James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute, said the sad and ironic takeaway from the case is that ESI simply failed to obtain a readily accessible permit from the federal government before its wind turbines bludgeoned more than 150 eagles to death in mid-flight.

“The federal government routinely issues such permits to wind power producers, while forbidding — for good reason — anybody else from killing bald eagles and golden eagles,” Taylor said. “The federal government’s concern is not to protect eagles, but to protect its own regulatory fiefdom.”

Taylor said wind power companies are “cold-blooded executioners of literally millions of birds and bats each year in the United States,” which is a primary reason bird and bat populations are in alarming decline.

American Bird Conservancy said it is still reviewing the finer details of the settlement, but Joel Merriman, director of the Conservancy’s Bird-Smart Wind Energy Campaign said enforcement through MBTA is a positive.

Bird populations in North America are down. A 2019 study from Cornell University found the region has lost nearly 3 billion birds in the last 50 years. “It’s pretty staggering,” Merriman said. “That’s the kind of thing that I think should get people’s attention.”