The green choice

RSPB: Wind farm strikes at eagle stronghold

A key population of Europe's largest eagle has been significantly reduced by a wind farm.

Only one white-tailed eagle is expected to fledge from the wind farm site on the bird's former stronghold of Smøla, a set of islands about six miles (ten kilometres) off the north-west Norwegian coast.

Turbine blades have killed nine of the birds in the last ten months including all three chicks that fledged last year.

The number of young has crashed from at least ten each year before the wind farm was built, with numbers outside the wind farm falling as well—there are no breeding pairs within one kilometre of the turbines.

To add insult to death, nobody seems to have worked out that wind powerstations are almost literally pissing in the wind—including the RSPB.

As I have previously stated, I object to these things being referred to as wind farms, but I'm beginning to have second thoughts about referring to them as wind powerstations too: perhaps we should call them wind abattoirs instead.

Richard Carter

A fat, bearded chap with a Charles Darwin fixation.

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