Wind Farm Permits to Kill Protected Eagles

Yesterday the Department of Interior finalized a rule that allows wind farms to get 30-year permits allowing them to kill federally-protected eagles. Eagles are frequent accidental victims of power plants and wind turbines, and the government has long taken the position that it is a federal crime to kill an eagle even unintentionally. To get the permit, the farms have to take various conservation measures.

Apropos of Eugene’s blogging this week, there is also a RFRA connection. In 2008, the Tenth Circuit decided a case called United States v. Winslow Friday, in which Mr. Friday was prosecuted for killing a bald eagle to use in his tribe’s religious ritual. One of Mr. Friday’s arguments on appeal was that RFRA requires the federal government to treat tribal killings and power-company killings of eagles with parity. The Court did not disagree with this premise, but concluded, at the time, that “with respect to both religious and secular threats to the eagle, the government appears to take a similar approach.”

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