Altamont Pass

HIDING MORTALITY: THE WOLFE ISLAND SLAUGHTER

 

By Jim Wiegand, wildlife biologist

September 27, 2013 (San Diego's East County) -- While Altamont Pass operators have been hiding most of their wind turbine mortality with search intervals of 30-90 days, the rest of North American wind farms hide mortality by using search areas that are far too small.  By using only 50 meter search areas for their huge new turbines, the wind facility operators can easily hide over 90% of fatalities caused from turbine blade strikes.


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READER’S EDITORIAL: EXPANDING WIND ENERGY WITH SMOKE AND MIRRORS

 
By Jim Wiegand, wildlife biologist

 

 
Editor’s note:  Several massive wind farm projects are proposed for San Diego’s East County and neighboring Imperial County. The County is now considering a wind ordinance to make it easier to build wind farms.  But is the wind industry deceiving the public on bird death rates, particularly from new and larger turbines? 

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Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.