The Sowinski Files: OK to kill eagles? The answer is blowin’ in the wind
As the USFWS hounded the Sowinskis, the government made killing eagles easier for the wind industry
For years the United States Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) teamed with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to try and nab Paul and Alvin Sowinski of Sugar Camp for killing protected wildlife on their family property, finally nailing each on a single misdemeanor count of violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
Alvin Sowinski stipulated to poisoning one bird with bait; Paul Sowinski admitted to illegal possession of a bald eagle after finding a dead one and disposing of it. To the DNR and the USFWS, their actions were much worse than the final charges would indicate: The DNR described the events on the Sowinski farm as “horrendous,” even though the total number of dead animals found on their property—dead, not poisoned—after four years of constant trespassing was less than the number of agents who stormed their house on a single morning in 2010.
Truth be known, though, when it comes to having eagle blood on one’s hands, the Sowinskis ain’t got nothing on the USFWS itself. In fact, its work in helping to decimate the eagle population in critical habitats is much more horrendous than anything ever found on the Sowinski farm. Through the years, a number of bird preservation organizations have contended that, when it comes to bird slaughter, the federal government and massive wind farms are the real menace. Wind turbines take tens of thousands of bird lives each year, not to mention thousands of eagles, and the government not only has formally looked the other way but lathered massive subsidies on the industry without requiring aggressive abatement of the bird kills.
When it comes to the development of wind energy, the government accepts the destruction of wildlife as mere collateral damage. Bird kills have always been a problem with wind turbines—which some call Cuisinarts of the Sky—but the policies of the Obama administration exacerbated rather than abated the kills, enshrining in the regulatory framework a special-interest protection incentive to avoid expensive technologies that could reduce collisions.
That regulatory framework is still in place, and the bird kills continue.
So, just how many eagles are being killed? …