Trump Interior Secretary Doug Burgum cares about bald eagles — if they stall wind energy

The Trump administration is anxious, it might appear, about eagles — like, the large birds of prey with sharp talons and famously good eyesight.Earlier this month, Inside Secretary Doug Burgum, who oversees endangered species, wrote on X that wind-energy tasks kill eagles, together with the enduring bald eagle, and his company would work to guard them from hurt.He even appended a memo to the publish that directs the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which falls beneath Burgum’s command, to implement an present legislation known as the Bald and Golden Eagle Safety Act to ensure that these birds should not “sacrificed” for wind energy. The legislation makes killing or harming eagles with out a authorities allow unlawful.One attainable interpretation is that Burgum merely cares about birds. Or the bald eagle, anyway, a nationwide image.A extra apparent one is that the Trump administration continues to do all the pieces it may to shutter or stall the build-out of US wind farms — which Trump actually appears to abhor. That apparently contains all of the sudden caring about sure wildlife rules.To be clear, wind generators are, in actual fact, a critical menace to birds of prey, together with eagles, and to bats, particularly after they’re not constructed or operated with wildlife in thoughts. Correct estimates are laborious to come back by, although it’s cheap to imagine that turbine blades kill tons of of eagles per 12 months nationwide. That quantity is someplace round 1 million birds per 12 months in case you account for all avian species, based on knowledge scientist Hannah Ritchie.That being mentioned, a a lot larger menace to birds is stray cats, buildings, and automobiles. Cats, alone, kill as many as 2.4 billion birds per 12 months nationwide. Sure, billion.And one other extra critical menace than generators? Local weather change — the very downside that wind vitality helps repair. A landmark 2019 report by the Nationwide Audubon Society, a nonprofit hen conservation group, discovered that rising temperatures put practically two-thirds of North American hen species at an elevated threat of extinction, together with golden eagles.Lastly, there’s this: Though bald eagles had been as soon as getting ready to extinction, these birds are doing simply wonderful now. Really greater than wonderful. Between 2009 and 2019, their inhabitants within the decrease 48 states quadrupled to greater than 300,000 people, near historic inhabitants estimates. That doesn’t embody Alaska — dwelling to the biggest bald eagle inhabitants within the US — the place some individuals take into account them pests as a result of they’re so ample.Bald eagles don’t want saving from Trump officers.The various species that do, in the meantime, are shedding protections due to coverage choices by these exact same officers. To date, the Trump administration has moved to restrict the scope of legal guidelines meant to safeguard migratory birds, together with eagles, and all federally endangered species, seemingly to loosen restrictions on the oil and gasoline business. Individually, in Might, the administration took steps to undo federal protections for the lesser prairie-chicken, an imperiled floor hen in Texas that lives atop oil-rich lands. It’s additionally planning to open up eagle-filled wilderness in Alaska to drilling, lower funding for a bird-monitoring program, and log extra US forests, that are famously the place birds stay.Mockingly, it’s the insurance policies and applications that Trump officers at the moment are eroding that helped save bald eagles within the first place. So if the administration was critical about serving to eagles — or the tons of of different American hen species, from hummingbirds to owls — it’s fairly clear that its actions would look so much completely different.