President Joe Biden’s grandiose plans for offshore industrial wind facilities lining the nation’s coasts have more than a few hurdles to clear before they can become reality. One of those is the fate of endangered North Atlantic right whales, whose migration route is in the bullseye of the offshore wind proposals.
Search Results for: wildlife
The Water Problem in the West Is Not Just Drought, It’s Policy
Western water policies going back to 1922 are making it difficult or impossible to deal with drought in California, Arizona, and Nevada, says Shawn Regan, writing in National Review (behind a paywall). Regan is vice president of research at PERC (the Property and Environment Research Center). To begin with, says Regan, the Colorado River Compact…
Why Such a Summer of Turmoil in the Netherlands?
“A standoff between Dutch farmers and their government is causing havoc in the Netherlands this summer. Protesters have withheld deliveries from grocery stores, smeared manure outside the home of the agriculture minister, and blocked highways with hay bales and tires,” writes Ciara Nugent for Time magazine. Farmers in the Netherlands have a good reason to…
How to Protect Eagles from Wind Turbines
A paper by Molly Espey and Eamon Espey says that tradable permits can reduce the killing of eagles and other birds by wind turbines. “By effectively creating a market for eagle take, wind energy producers would be forced to consider the marginal cost of killing an eagle and adjust their behavior accordingly, ” say the…
Back to ‘Shoot, Shovel and Shut Up’: Court Drops Trump’s Common-Sense Rules on Endangered Species
“With this change, we’re back to the ‘shoot, shovel, and shut up’ status quo.” (PERC Tweet). A federal district court in California has vacated Trump-administration rules designed to make the Endangered Species Act more fair and effective. The most important rule dealt with the treatment of threatened species, which are species that are not yet…
Forest Service Halts Prescribed Burns. More Fire Danger Will Follow
The U.S. Forest Service has halted prescribed burns (fires deliberately started to reduce trees and brush that could fuel dangerous wildfires) for 90 days—that is, for most of the summer. The reason is that a prescribed burn in April led to the Hermits Peak Fire in New Mexico—which, by joining with the Calf Canyon fire—became…