What is killing Bald Eagles in Utah?

Yea, www.youtube.com...

The idea generally is to avoid this sort of attraction and create more disinterest in the perch and swirly. May be some concern with solar towers too, not sure yet.

Maybe they could study some sound waves that would deter the birds. I can see where solutions are hard. And our administration could give a crap about the casualties as usual. People say we can continue to grow in population and I say this is just another example that our footprint is "always" impactful (to make room for us we push other species out).

There will also be those who justify and minimize because it's part of self preservation to do so but when will it be enough? When will we have a 0% tolerance of loss of something else to make life more convenient for us? I suspect it will never happen.

reply to post by Dianec


Possibly, or just let them be the birds that they are. let them perch.

Maybe run a smaller pole above the generator and make sure it clears the blades by ten/twenty feet or so. out of the draft. Let them perch on that. It better to not mess with their senses too much. But if they can keep them out of the blades that should help.

I doubt that wind turbines are the cause here because it would be blatantly obvious in that case with the bird found next to the turbine with severe fractures. We have large wind farms here with Vestas V90 turbines and yes, there has been a few wedge-tail eagle fatalities but there's no doubt at all as to what happened (no need for a Sherlock Holmes). The turbines revolve at a remarkably slow speed so it's almost never a case of the bird being hit by the blade. Mostly it's the bird flying into the slow blade head-on suffering a broken neck.

There's a rare breed of parrot here that caused major opposition to the establishment of wind farms from the wilderness society and others. Predator-proof (dogs, cats devils etc) fences were initially erected around each turbine so that any victims could be found and counted. Those enclosures were inspected daily but I've never heard of one of those small parrots being found victim and that's because of their habit of staying near the ground when over land, flitting from bush to bush so they're well under the blades even if they do happen to traverse the wind farm area.

The described phenomenon of dead eagles in Utah lines up with my earlier suggestion of poison baits being laid out. The birds find easy prey and become victims themselves. These are not always legal, approved and publicized with plenty of landowners prepared to try anything on-the-quiet to eliminate pests on their farming properties. Collateral damage is not a concern to many.

I've always thought that theories should factor in what is already known.

One of the most obvious symptoms is head tremors, likely caused by a swelling of the brain — a sign of West Nile virus.

"Because they are showing signs of encephalitis, we are treating it ... with anti-inflammatories," said DaLyn Erickson of the rehab center.

They will know in a week.

Nephalim
reply to post by Dianec

 

Possibly, or just let them be the birds that they are. let them perch.

Maybe run a smaller pole above the generator and make sure it clears the blades by ten/twenty feet or so. out of the draft. Let them perch on that. It better to not mess with their senses too much. But if they can keep them out of the blades that should help.

edit on 29-12-2013 by Nephalim because: (no reason given)

This is a solution (better than nothing). So if people were to donate a few dollars to see this done would they even add these safety measures? I can't see why it would be a problem if they didn't have to (god forbid), absorb the cost.

The 'perch' idea really isn't a practical suggestion in terms of construction.

To get an idea of scale, the Vestas V90-3MW is something of an industry standard with a 90m (295') tall tower, a 70 ton nacelle on top with 360 degree horizontal rotation and 3 x 44m (144') 7 ton variable pitch blades mounted on the hub at the front of the nacelle. The circle described by the blades is 90m (295') diameter centred at the top of the 90m tower and it rotates at 16rpm. The maximum swept height is 145m above the ground and even taller towers are used in certain locations.

If such a perch was added it would need to be through the centre of the nacelle (houses the gearbox, bearings, generator, transformer, communications, wind speed/direction sensors and control logic etc) itself to not interfere with the turbine's ability to align to the wind direction and would add over 50m to the height of the tower, severely obstructing removal of the nacelle when required ('perch' tower would need to be dismantled first). Placing such a facility for birds in the middle of a windfarm could actually be the cause of more bird fatalities if it draws more birds into the area.

Not going to happen is the bottom line.

The Utah birds are showing signs of a biological or chemical agent which is in their environment either naturally or deliberately introduced (most likely source IMO).

We had a train de-rail and dumb a bunch of chemicals in the river close to where i live, tons of fish where killed, and im guessing some of the chemicals are still in the water. This river branches south of where i live, to a small town called brakendale, brithish columbia canada. Its a famous hang out for eagles, also salmon go up this river to spawn. There was a drop in eagle counts for the next few years, nothing crazy but eagle where affected by the contaminated fish.

Are these the birds that dies because they ate other birds that had the west nile virus?

www.huffingtonpost.com...

here's another article that says it's west nile virus : www.stgeorgeutah.com...

it's really odd for west nile to be an issue at this time of year. REALLY odd. it's also odd that it has affected so many eagles. even in summer months it's not common for so many to be sick all at once. (i could be wrong about that but i've never heard of so many with west nile before).

reply to post by pasiphae


You are right about that.
WN Virus was rules out, now it's the conclusion. Doesn't pass the smell test.

reply to post by openminded2011


Being a top predator Bald Eagles are prone to the accumulation of toxins in there bodies. This is often a sign that something is wrong lower down the food chain.