Who knew that another long-standing government scandal could be so funny?
Not me. I am too busy wiping away tears from laughing so hard.

by Jim Beers

This (Sunday) morning St. Paul Pioneer Press front page, left, is priceless. Ms. Dina Cappiello reports the following:

Headline – Feds Quiet as Wind Farms Kill Eagles
Subtitle – Industry hasn’t faced fines that electric, oil companies have
Excerpts –

• “The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind farm for killing eagles and other protected bird species”
  “More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country’s wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles”
• “Each death is a federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted”
• “When (wind turbine) companies voluntarily report (bird) deaths, the Obama administration refuses to make the information public”
  Regarding eagles alone, “14 deaths at 7 facilities in California” “five each in New Mexico and Oregon”
  According to a “former US Fish & Wildlife Service enforcement agent” “if you electrocute an eagle, that is bad, but if you chop it to pieces, that is OK”
• While the “Justice Department declined to discuss the status of (ongoing) cases”: the all-too-familiar (to regular readers of my writing) Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Dan Ashe (who was in charge of the excise taxes stolen from state fish and wildlife agencies in the mid-1990’s to capture and insert wolves into the Upper Rocky Mountain States) said it all, to wit, his agency has always made it clear to wind companies that if they kill birds they would still be liable.
• “Meanwhile, the Obama administration has proposed a rule that would give wind energy companies potentially decades of shelter from prosecution for killing eagles.”
  
  What a hoot!
  
  I have just made a cursory review of my archive of articles (over 1700) since my acceptance of a cash settlement for retiring from the US Fish & Wildlife Service in 1999. There are at least 9 articles specifically dedicated to describing this very bird/wind turbine carnage and at least another dozen or two where passing reference to this scandal was made very clear while emphasizing the federal government (USFWS who has the specific responsibility) failure to hold wind power operators to any legal accountability for Millions of birds killed annually by the behemoth turbine blades travelling at hundreds of miles per hour at the outside that are scientifically-placed exactly where birds migrate twice each year. All this while USFWS was “throwing the book” and churning out publicity about some hunter with a hen duck or some oil company with a dead grebe in their pond.
  
  In all fairness here and recognizing Ms. Cappiello’s fine article despite this shortcoming: USFWS is far from the only one responsible for this sad scandal. For the past 25 years as this was “kept in the closet”, where was the Audubon Society? The American Ornithologists’ Union? The elite “bird” Universities like Cornell (that got millions of out tax dollars to search for the long-EXTINCT Ivory-billed Woodpecker all over the South where the locals were evidently too dumb to recognize or report them)? All those birdwatchers? All of our State fish and wildlife agency bureaucrat “protectors of fin and feathers”? Their silence was deafening while they met with, schmoozed, dined with and glorified USFWS and their tyrannical programs like wolves, grizzly bears, free-roaming buffalo, private property seizures, State plant and animal authority seizures, etc., etc.?
  
  But wait: what is funny about wind turbines killing millions of birds including eagles while the bureaucrats and those otherwise silent birdwatchers press for total elimination of lead shot and lead bullets that effect barely a fraction of the eagle deaths caused by the “sacred” wind turbines on which we must all one day depend? Oh yeah, I forgot.
  
  Can anyone guess who the article’s author, Ms. Cappiello, works for? If you said, Associate Press, you get an “A”. Now for extra credit, what is the connection between AP and the Obama administration in the news of late? If you said, why aren’t they the news outfit that has been a shill for the Obama administration until last week when they found out that the Obama administration “investigators” had seized (with or without a Search Warrant or Grand Jury Subpoena?) phone records of AP reporters and certain patrons of The US Congress Cloakroom: you get the extra credit. Could AP really be zinging the Obama administration?
  
  So, in a matter of days AP puts together a very embarrassing article about USFWS treating every bird killer, except the biggie “greenie” wind turbine operators collecting billions of government grants and subsidies, like IRS treating the Grand Poohba of The Tea Party Headquarters in Sandpoint, Idaho during an audit. I don’t think so. Given the short time to create this “payback” article from AP to its former chums in the Obama administration; I have no doubt that the news folks all knew about this scandal for a long time but were keeping it quiet either because they didn’t want to hinder the Obama administration giving us all “change”, or because of the USFWS myth that USFWS and their “cooperators” are always on the side of the “angels” or “native” species, as the case may be.
  
  Watching this little tit-for-tat (bird scandal-for-secret seizure of phone records) unfold, one is reminded of elementary school boys (sorry about not being diverse here) arguing to the point of screaming something like, “’My old man can beat your old man’; ‘oh yeah’; ‘yeah’.” As an old enforcement guy however, I am going to listen carefully.
  
  When gang members start arguing, one of them may spill the beans to get the other one, or to protect themselves from retaliation. While the Obama administration is what it is, AP is new to the fight and may actually be interested in protecting itself from its former buddy/bully. Whether AP behaves like some ever-hopeful battered girlfriend or some gun owner fighting gun control remains to be seen. We should all keep an eye on this.
  
  Jim Beers
  19 May 2013

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Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.

Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting. You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to: jimbeers7@comcast.net