Here.
An excerpt:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is considering eliminating most public oversight of wind turbine impacts on protected bald and golden eagles by offering developers 30-year permits to kill eagles by accident, as opposed to the current 5-year permits. What’s more, they’re shaping the implementation of that proposed policy change in a series of private “stakeholders'” meetings to which the public is not invited.
American Bird Conservancy letter here.
From U~T San Diego here:
Native American tribal officials remain concerned about artifacts as well as the basic visual intrusion on a landscape tied to the creation stories of several nearby tribes.
“That’s part of these people’s spiritual identity, and yet they want to put up turbines and destroy and interfere with that reverence and the serenity of what the creator gave them,” said John Bathke, a historic preservation officer for the Quechan Indian Tribe.
And
“We understand that they have those concerns with regard to consultation,” said Erin Curtis, a spokeswoman for the BLM in Sacramento. Federal policy on tribal consultation, she said, “doesn’t necessarily require agreement all of the time.”
The Bureau of Land Management Press Release is here.
The Record of Decision, Final EIS, and other information from the BLM can be found here.
From the NYTs:
TOKSOOK BAY, Alaska — Beyond the fishing boats, the snug homes and the tanks of diesel fuel marking this Eskimo village on the Bering Sea, three huge wind turbines tower over the tundra. Their blades spin slowly in a breeze cold enough to freeze skin.
One of the nation’s harshest landscapes, it turns out, is becoming fertile ground for green power.
As interest in cleaning up power generation grows around the country, Alaska is fast becoming a testing ground for new technologies and an unlikely experiment in oil-state support for renewable energy. Alaskans once cast a wary eye on anything smacking of environmentalism, but today they are investing heavily in green power, not so much to reduce emissions as to save cash.
Turtle Talk 