Here are extensive extracts from an article which points out this instance of tendencies what I have previously called "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Who guards the people from the "guardian" governmental officials?", though in this case the people includes many beings, especially birds.
"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with protecting bald and golden eagles, is once again trying to make it easier for the wind industry to kill those birds....
Two weeks ago the agency opened
public comment on “proposed improvements” to its eagle conservation
program. It wants to extend the length of permits for accidental eagle
kills from the current five years to 30 years. The changes would allow
wind-energy producers to kill or injure as many as 4,200 bald eagles
every year. That’s a lot. The agency estimates there are now about 72,434 bald eagles in the continental U.S.Let’s hope Judge Lucy H. Koh is keeping an eye out. Last August, Ms. Koh, a federal judge in California, shot down the Fish and Wildlife Service’s previous “improvements....”
...Judge Koh noted in her ruling
,
one of the agency’s own eagle program managers warned that 30-year
permits are “inherently less protective” and “real, significant, and
cumulative biological impacts will result.”A 2013 study
in the Wildlife Society Bulletin estimated that wind turbines killed
about 888,000 bats and 573,000 birds (including 83,000 raptors) in 2012
alone. But wind capacity has since increased by about 24%, and it could
triple by 2030 under the White House’s Clean Power Plan. We don’t really know how many birds are being killed now by wind
turbines because the wind industry doesn’t have to report the data,”
says Michael Hutchins of the American Bird Conservancy. “It’s considered a trade secret.”The new rule could further harm golden eagles, which are rarer than bald eagles and are being whacked by wind turbines in far greater numbers. Mr. Hutchins says that the lack of protection for golden eagles is “the biggest weakness of this whole rule.”
The double standard is stunning. In 2011 the Fish and Wildlife Service convinced the Justice Department to file criminal indictments
against three oil companies working in North Dakota’s Bakken field for inadvertently killing six ducks and one phoebe.Now see how the agency treats wind: In 2013 it submitted to the Federal Register
that “wind developers have informed the [Department of the Interior]
and the Service that 5-year permits have inhibited their ability to
obtain financing, and we changed the regulations to accommodate that
need.”Nine months after being rebuked by a federal judge, America’s top wildlife protector is still bending over backward to accommodate an industry that is killing iconic wildlife while at the same time collecting huge subsidies from taxpayers. If there’s a better example of regulatory capture and crony capitalism, I can’t think of one."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/an-ill-wind-open-season-on-bald-eagles-1463344701
What can be our skillful Bodhisattvic responses to this? Might our actions include contacting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and commenting during its opened
public comment period on “proposed improvements” to its eagle conservation
program?