Posts Tagged: Fish and Wildlife Services

Raptor deaths dirty California’s cleanest energy source

Federal wildlife conservation officials have launched an inquest into the deaths of protected birds at a California wind farm, Louis Sahagun of the Los Angeles Times reports, highlighting a potentially crippling drawback of one of the world’s cleanest power sources.

A total of seven golden eagles are believed to have been killed over the course of two years after colliding with one of 90 windmills at the Pine Tree windmill site. The windmills, operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in the Tehachapi Mountains went on-line in 2009 and are spread out among 8,000 acres, generating 120 megawatts of electricity. (more…)

Carp prevention plan may have been overkill

Asian Carp

Last Thursday the Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources teamed up with the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to poison Chicago’s Calumet River in order to root out all the Asian carp. Well, five days later there’s 100,000 pounds of dead fish — none of which are Asian carp, reports John Flesher of the Associated Press. The idea was to prevent any carp that swam up the Mississippi River from entering Lake Michigan where they “could disrupt the food chain and devastate the $7 billion fishing industry.” But apparently no carp have made the journey all the way to the river, which is just 20 miles south of Lake Michigan. (more…)