WILL AUSTRALIA APPROVE EAGLE-KILLER WINDFARM AT YALOAK, REWARDING MENDACIOUS CONSULTANT?
Ian Smales of Biosis Research persists in using erroneous parameters, manipulates the science, and is caught lying
At stake here are the lives of about 200-300 Wedge-tailes eagles likely to be killed if the Yaloak South windfarm project is approved. The consultant, who is in the employ of the promoter, uses all the tricks in the book to reduce his mortality predictions to unrealistically low figures.
Biosis did the same thing in 2005 in Tasmania. Their predictions proved wrong by one order of magnitude when endangered Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagles started to fall dead under the turbines of the Woolnorth windfarm at a rate of 5 per year. The species, as a result, is condemned to extinction (see our article # 4382).
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Expert opinion of Save The Eagles International on the input from Ian Smales, a Biosis Research Pty Ltd consultant doing work for the Yaloak South windfarm promoter.
Dear Sirs,
Further to our pre-submission of March 10th, followed by our comments of April 6th on Chapter 8 of the Pacific Hydro environmental impact report (2009), please register our comments on the following new input from Biosis consultant Ian Smales: Expert Report of Ian John Smales, 5th July 2010, and Wedge-tailed Eagles Turbine Collision Risk Modelling Yaloak South Wind Farm, updated June 2010.
We wish to denounce 3 manipulations and a lie:
A) First manipulation: as noted by expert witness P.W. Menkhorst, there is no basis for estimating that 15 Wedge-tailed Eagles is the maximum population at the site, and that it only occurs at Yaloak 10% of the time.
Immature eagles and adult “floaters” are year-long vagrants flying over entire continents. Escarpments such as the one present at Yaloak attract them. This being the case, one hundred or more of them are likely to spend some time in the windfarm area over a year period. All will be at risk of being killed by the turbines. Estimating without solid evidence that there are only 6 eagles present at Yaloak 90% of the time, Mr Smales wants us to believe that 5.3 deaths a year would be a maximum, where in fact annual mortality is likely to be well over 10.
On pages 4 and 7 of his expert report we read that the figures “6 eagles 90% of the time” were suggested by the DSE: "This has been revised to values suggested by officers of Department of Sustainability and Environment ." But on page 6 of the same document we discover the figures were in fact his own: "Mr Nick Jaschenko (DSE Ballarat) and Mr Richard Hill (DSE Casterton) have both agreed with my assessment of the population of Wedge-tailed Eagles utilising the Yaloak South site."
The Yaloak site attracts young eagles coming from all over Australia. Building a windfarm on this site would create a population sink for these magnificent birds. At the infamous Altamont Pass windfarm, California, 116 golden eagles have been killed on average yearly (1). Over its 20 year existence, the huge windfarm is estimated to have killed 2,300 golden eagles, and as a result there are indications that their California population is dwindling (2).
Regarding the fate of the Wedge-tailed Eagle as a species, Biosis claims that cumulative studies cannot be made. Thus, we won’t know till it’s too late the effect of so many windfarms on its survival.
B) The second manipulation consists in using a “range” of avoidance rates, instead of a single one. Of this range, only the rate of 90% has been validated by real life experience, at the only windfarm being (more or less) properly monitored in Australia: Woolnorth. The other rates have proved to be wrong by a wide margin, but Biosis continues to use them, thus artificially diluting the effect of the 90% rate. For the Yaloak project has more chances of being approved if predicted mortality reads: “5.3 to 0.3 eagles per year” rather than just “5.3 eagles per year” (or, as it should really be, “10 or more eagles a year” – see (A) above).
Ian Smales recognised himself that 90% is the rate to use for WT eagles: “The Wedge-tailed Eagle is a species that appears to exhibit a lower avoidance rate than most bird species (S. Muir, Symbolix Pty. Ltd, unpublished data), which is why the 90% avoidance rate has been provided in Biosis Research collision risk modelling for that species at Woolnorth since 2006” (3)
In bad faith, he is now arguing (page 9 of his report) that 90% is only one of several rates Biosis has been using at Woolnorth since 2006. But further quotes from his declaration at the Stockyard Hill hearings show that 90% is the only valid rate: “For a 90% avoidance rate the model’s prediction for the two wind farms combined * is thus 3.99 Wedge-tailed Eagle mortalities per annum which is slightly higher than the actual mortality.”
* These two windfarms taken together are known as “Woolnorth”
Note: in fact, actual mortality at Woolnorth averages 5 eagles a year (5). In view of this, 90 % is barely correct, and any larger rate has no basis in reality. But other rates the Biosis consultant pretends to use yield a range of eagle mortality going as low as 0.3 (sic).
The consultant then crowed: “The example of Wedge-tailed Eagles at Woolnorth… demonstrates that the Biosis Research collision risk model is an accurate predictive tool”.
Note: but what it actually demonstrates is that a 90% avoidance rate, not 95, 98%, 99%, or 99.8%, produces a (more or less) accurate mortality prediction - the 4 higher rates must be discarded.
C) The third manipulation consists in trying to justify the continued use of their old, erroneous avoidance rates that condemned the Tasmanian Wedge-tailed eagle to extinction (see below), plus the introduction of a new, even more wildly off-the-mark rate of 99.8%.
First we are being quoted a study from an equally biased expert from abroad. But there are no Wedge-tailed Eagles in Europe or the US, so Mr Smales enlists the help of various windfarm operators (hardly objective observers), asking them a question amounting to this: has your windfarm killed any WT eagles to date? Some of these windfarms, he argues, are being (loosely) monitored. In fact only Bluff Point and Studland Bay, collectively referred to as Woolnorth, are being monitored more or less adequately in Australia.
Results of this fishing expedition: Wedge tailed eagles have been killed by wind turbines at Waubra, Starfish Hill, Wonthaggi, and Yambuk. But we are told no eagles were killed at Challicum Hills. To assess the credibility of that doubtful information, we refer you to our prior comments on Challicum, in our submission of April 6th commenting on Chapter 8 of the Pacific Hydro environmental impact report (2009).
Then we read that no fatalities were reported at Codrington wind farm. Here we must object, because it is demonstrably incorrect: see the press article below (5). The article in question is just the tip of the iceberg: it has been proven elsewhere that eagles killed at windfarms are often made to disappear by windfarm employees (6).
The Codrington death(s) omission, and the dubious value of loose monitoring figures from Challicum and some other windfarms are indicative of the low quality of data used by Biosis to justify using avoidance rates that have proved so wrong at Woolnorth - rates that Mr Smales had otherwise scorned at the Stockyard Hill hearings, flaunting the 90% which had transformed his collision model into “an accurate predictive tool”.
D) After the manipulations, the lie:
In March of this year, at the Stockyard Hill hearings, Mr Smales declared that Biosis had been using the 90% avoidance rate for WT eagles since 2006 (3). Incredibly, the consultant now pretends that Biosis only found out in 2010 about WT eagle avoidance being below 95% (last lines, page 9 of his expert report of July 5th). This is an attempt to justify his not using 90% for Yaloak South in 2009, something that Dr Debus and myself had been criticising before: Wind farm project likely to kill 200-300 eagles - Australia
The manipulations and the lie, to try and get the sinister Yaloak project approved, come after the Biosis “errors” that condemned the Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagle to extinction. These have been fully exposed here: Wind farms: suspicious error by consultant condemns Tasmanian eagle to extinction
It pleases Mr. Smales to recite his credentials, but one must not forget that he is in the employ of a windfarm promoter. The conflict of interest is obvious.
More tricks used by Mr Smales:
1) The site specific obfuscation
On page 10 of his report (5 July 2010) Mr Smales replies to comments made by Dr Stephen Debus and myself using arguments I have refuted above, plus this one: “it should not be assumed that experience of eagles at any other particular wind farm location will be repeated at Yaloak South”.
In other words, we are being asked to discard real mortality records from Woolnorth, using instead Biosis predictions based on avoidance rates that have proved shy of reality by a factor of 10, supported by self-serving mortality data provided by windfarm operators. Since when junk science trumps reality? This is an insult to our intelligence.
2) Quoting other reports from biased consultants
In his updated report on collision modelling for Yaloak, Ian Smales states that most windfarms in the world kill “considerably fewer than 10 individuals (of any given bird or bat species) per annum”. But 10 deaths p.a. for protected or endangered species, multiplied by a large number of windfarms, plus the deaths from electrocution or collision at HT power lines linking those windfarms to the grid, all this finally adds up in a country where biodiversity is already on the decline. The Tasmanian WT eagle is already paying the price.
3) The fallacy that fossil fuels kill more birds
This consultant makes himself the advocate of windfarm promoters at the expense of biodiversity, using the very arguments we often hear from the windpower lobby. He cites for instance the Sovacol study, which states that coal-fired power plants kill more birds than windfarms. But these are indirect kills, assuming that global warming kills a great many birds and that these plants are responsible for it.
Other assumptions of the study:
- global warming is caused by human emissions of CO2
- runaway global warming is occurring as we speak
- windfarms will allow us to decommission coal-fired power plants
There is a considerable body of evidence showing that these assumptions may not be rooted in reality. I shall only address the last one, briefly:
The intermittent nature of wind-produced energy prevents any fossil-fuel or nuclear plant to be decommissionned. As demand grows, more of these will actually need to be built for the days without wind. And when there is wind, its erratic nature makes it necessary to stabilise wind-produced electricity with fossil-fuel power stations ramping up and down their production to compensate for the wind’s variability. Like cars in city traffic, accelerating and decelerating frequently, they burn as much as 100% more fossil fuels than if windfarms did not exist.
So much for the Sovacol study.
A study by Mr Mooney (2005) is also quoted, showing that many eagles are killed by other human causes in Tasmania. But this does not justify adding a new cause, ON THE CONTRARY. The logic of Mr Smales is seriously deficient, it would seem.
CONCLUSION
There would be more to say on the Biosis charade, but time is of essence and I shall conclude now.
We have seen that Mr Smales manipulates the science, obfuscates issues, and even lies to us. Logically, such cynicism is only possible when a consultant thinks his project will be approved regardless of how brazen are his misrepresentations. We hope this is not the case.
The world is waiting to find out whether the eagle-killer Yaloak project will be approved, and Mr Smales rewarded for its unethical, biodiversity-threatening behaviour.
Sincerely
Mark Duchamp
President
Detailed critique of the Yaloak wind farm project:
Wind farm project likely to kill 200-300 eagles - Australia
and
Save the Eagles International denounces Bird Societies and "hired guns" consultants
and
Wind farms: suspicious error by consultant condemns Tasmanian eagle to extinction
Further developments on this case:
Does the Australian government care about biodiversity? - Yaloak is the test.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) – In 2004, it was scientifically estimated that 2,300 golden eagles had been killed at Altamont Pass wind farm since the wind farm was built in the eighties (23 years to 2004) - Dr. Smallwood & K. Thelander, Aug. 2004, Developing Methods to Reduce Bird Mortality in the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area - SEE CHAPTER 3, page 73, TABLE 3.11, 1ST LINE : "116.5 golden eagles p.a. adjusted for search detection and scavenging." ---> http://www.energy.ca.gov/pier/final_project_reports/500-04-02.html
The report has been removed from the web, but I have kept a copy: I shall send it upon request (it weighs 12 Mb).
(2) – the number of young eagles observed at the Altamont is now half what it used to be, an indication that the California eagle population may have been affected by the 2,300 deaths: RANGE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES TO REDUCE WIND TURBINE IMPACTS ON BURROWING OWLS AND OTHER RAPTORS IN THE ALTAMONT PASS WIND RESOURCE AREA, CALIFORNIA - California Energy Commission, PIER Final Project Report - Dr. Smallwood et al. (October 2009) --> DR SMALLWOOD
(3) – Biosis uses the 90% avoidance rate since 2006 -->
Stockyard Hill hearings (http://www.iberica2000.org/documents/EOLICA/REPORTS/Yaloak_Expert_witness_statement_of_ Ian_Smales.pdf)
(4) – 5 eagle deaths per annum at Woolnorth ---> Dr DEBUS comments (http://www.iberica2000.org/documents/eolica/BIRD_MORTALITY/Yaloak_South_Debus_comments.pdf)
(5) – Eagle killed “by a sharp instrument” at Codrington windfarm. The link is no longer operative, so we reproduce the article below:
http://the.standard.net.au/articles/2005/08/08/1123353240511.htm
Quote
Eagle s death at wind farm
By VANESSA BURROW
August 8, 2005
SCIENTISTS are investigating what killed a wedge-tailed eagle that was found dead at the Codrington wind farm.
The protected bird was found dead on July 1 about 40 metres from a generator at the wind farm operated by Pacific Hydro.
Company spokeswoman Clare Laffan said the bird of prey was taken to the Museum of Victoria where scientists and an avifauna specialist confirmed it
was a wedge-tailed eagle.
"Their initial finding was that the bird was killed by a sharp instrument. The injuries are inconsistent with being hit by a (wind turbine) blade but we have queried that finding with the forensic specialists," she said.
"The bird was seen a couple of days before in the same place that it was found dead." Ms Laffan said any observations of the bird would be helpful in establishing what happened to it.
Department of Sustainability and Environment senior flora and fauna manager Andy Govanstone said he had not received any reports about a dead wedge-tailed eagle. Pacific Hydro was obliged to inform him of any injuries to animals, he said. But Ms Laffan said the Codrington wind farm did not have any conditions attached to it about informing the DSE about bird deaths.
Pacific Hydro s proposed 70-turbine wind farm at Yaloak near Ballan did not receive State Government planning approval because of the danger it posed to wedge-tailed eagles.
However, Minister for Planning Rob Hulls did not rule out approving a modified proposal.
Unquote
(6) – Windfarm employees burying embarrassing bird carcasses:
See ANNEX, section B of the following paper ---> Scottish government, European Commission guilty of ecological vandalism.
More evidence of this here --> Windfarms slaughter vultures in Spain - Covering up the evidence.
>> Autor: Mark Duchamp (18/07/2010)
>> Fuente: Mark Duchamp
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