Splake wrote:
1) Is there any need to remove the nest in the first place?
- until that question is answered there is no discussion of what mitigation strategy to use.
You don't think being located 25 m from a rotor blade merits efforts at wildlife conservation and mitigation and scientifically informed practices to "significantly reduce the risk of harm coming to" bald eagles?
Splake wrote:
2) Is there any evidence that the proposed mitigation will work?
- the onus is to provide evidence that the mitigation approach being proposed has a reasonable chance of success, the onus is not to provide evidence that it won't work
"
The Impact of Human Activities on Breeding Bald Eagles in North-Central Minnesota." James D. Fraser, et. al. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 49(3):585-592.
"Unsuccessful nests had no greater frequency of known human activity within 500 m than successful nests (P = 0.27) … We found no evidence that, under current management practices, human activities have an important impact on bald eagle reproductive success on the Chippewa National Forest."
There is an abundance of scientific literature on Bald Eagle nesting and breeding behavior, and the major factors dictating breeding success are well documented and well understood (adequate food supplies, satisfactory nest site with associated perching areas, and visibility of adjacent territory/feeding grounds … human disturbance is less of a factor, but human efforts at conservation that maximize these conditions improve the nesting success for active breeding pairs). Based on
specific recommendations from Ontario wildlife biologists for this area, I would also add very low environmental contamination from heavy metals.
Removing nests are
permitted in the US under the right conditions (detailed in
50 CFR 22.27): "the Service can
issue permits that allow the intentional take of eagle nests where necessary to alleviate a safety emergency to people or eagles, to ensure public health and safety, where a nest prevents use of a human-engineered structure, and to protect an interest in a particular locality where the activity or mitigation for the activity will provide a net benefit to eagles. Only inactive nests are allowed to be taken except in cases of safety emergencies."
These guidelines appear to have been met or exceeded in this instance. Others will have to tell me if anything similar exists in Canada (or whether such guidelines or rules need to be developed and proposed in light of this incident to better balance important wildlife conservation goals for protected species and development interests … roads, transmission lines, physical structures, communication towers, mining developments, forestry activities, and the like).
So I take it you are in favor of defining meaningful and science based federal or provincial environmental legislation that balance interests between public wildlife conservation goals and human development activities (in general), and not just for wind farms?