Image left: Bighorn Sheep at Ocotillo - Robert Baran photo, East County Magazine

By   Roy L. Hales at San Diego Loves Green, originally posted April 21, 2013

April 23, 2013 (San Diego’s East County) – The California Association of Environmental Professionals has awarded the Ocotillo Wind project with its highest award for Outstanding Environmental Analysis and Documentation at a joint conference of AEP and the National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP). The Builder, Pattern Energy, claims,  “The Ocotillo Wind project will provide enough clean and renewable energy to power nearly 125,000 homes in Southern California each year.”

Speaking as a non-scientist, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the name Ocotillo is a stream of videos (click on this link to go to the Save Ocotillo index page) that stretches beyond the four months this project has been online and continues to document the scarcity of wind. Though not a “scientific study,” they never-the-less constitute a visual chronology that includes a great many details that would not otherwise be available to the public. One has to merely scan the titles to realize something is very wrong:

Reprinted with permission from San Diego Loves Green.

By Roy L. Hales

March 6, 2013 (San Diego) -- According to a recent "Golden Eagle Threat Alert" by the Wildlife Research Institute (WRI), “human activity is causing the rapid extirpation of our last remaining Golden Eagle Territories.” They claim that over the past few decades, the number of San Diego’s “active golden eagle territories” has dropped from 103 to 49.

The US Fish & Wildlife Service states that wind turbines kill almost half a million birds every year. More recent studies suggest the number is much higher, somewhere between 13 and 39 million birds. Many of these are raptors.