With the announcement of the approval of the nonsensical wind power project at Ostrander Point in Prince Edward County (Crown land, ought to be a conservation area, not a power project) and yesterday’s destruction of a six-year-old Bald Eagle nest to accommodate a wind power project near Port Dover in Ontario, it’s clear: it’s a bad time to be a bird or a bat or a human being living in rural Ontario.

Wind power profits are in, Nature is “out.”

And, with the Legislature prorogued, there is no public forum in which to decry these acts.

Take a look at the “optics” of the Bald Eagle nest removal: the approval was listed on the government website last Friday (an old trick, much used by this government, to make sure notice is served but at a time when nobody notices) and the removal HAD to take place this weekend. The explanation was that as the Bald Eagle nest was so near a turbine site, its removal would protect the birds. The tree, an ancient and rare Cottonwood, also had to come down, because it’s where an access road is to be built to construct the turbines.

The eagles will not be saved: that is their territory and they will nest elsewhere, and likely, eventually, be killed in the wind power project as so many raptors are near these projects. And, when you consider that raptors like this live as long as 20 years, what is also being killed is generation after generation of Bald Eagles that the dead one would have produced, had they been allowed to live.

It’s a bad time to be part of Nature; it must also be a pretty rough gig to be a public relations spin doctor for the wind companies and the provincial government.

We’re sad and disgusted at ottawawindconcerns@yahoo.ca

Pictures of the nest removal are available at Ontario Wind Resistance at: http://ontario-wind-resistance.org/2013/01/05/wind-turbine-company-nextera-mnr-destroy-bald-eagle-nest-habitat/