Green Groups Ignore Genuine Risks To Whales From Offshore Wind Farms

Environmentalists want to crack down on the Maine lobster industry in the name of protecting endangered whales, but they turn a blind eye to the greater threat to whales from proposed offshore wind farms. The irony is almost as delicious as the lobster dinners at stake. Green groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife routinely target commercial fishing by claiming that it causes ancillary harm to marine species protected under the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws. This includes the North Atlantic right whale, whose population of only 350 or so migrates up and down the Atlantic Coast and can cross prime lobster territory off New England. >click to read< 11:52

7 Responses to Green Groups Ignore Genuine Risks To Whales From Offshore Wind Farms

  1. Joel H says:

    The overwhelming majority of these so called environmental groups are the biggest hypocrites in the world.
    How much money is being funneled into the coffers of these groups by the offshore wind companies? Green groups? You bet your ass. Green is what it’s all about. Following the money! And while we’re at it, how much green is being funneled into the accounts of the enviroscum politicians?
    Time to break out the tar and feathers again!

    • james R Lovgren says:

      Joel, you’re absolutely right. the industry needs to pay someone to investigate the financial web of bribes and contributions by wind farm companies, and [their employee’s] to all environmental groups, politicians, local civic groups, and everyone else they have bribed to push this massive fraud on the American people. The hypocrisy of the environmental groups needs to be exposed for all to see, they have made the decision, [which they have been doing for decades] that if you give them enough money they will support whatever environment destroying plan that’s proposed, as long as they can make it seem like they are defending the environment. Mainstream media helps out here, [along with government approved censorship, thanks for exposing it, Elon]. Maybe if we can discover how much these environmental frauds have collected for their cooperation, we can calculate just how much value they place on the lives of the northern right whale, which they, and they alone will be responsible for causing their extinction. These groups have put thousands of fishermen out of business to protect whales, and now they are going to be the ones to cause their extinction. The blame is on them because they are the only ones who had the power to stop this in its tracks, but decided instead to take the money and run. Someone please expose them!

  2. muddog says:

    Open Letter to Whale Conservation Groups with Conflicts of Interest
    Peter de Menocal, President and Director, Woods Hole Oceanography Institute

    Vikki N. Spruill, President and CEO, New England Aquarium

    Elizabeth Turnbull Henry, President, Environmental League of Massachusetts

    Stephen M. Coan, President and CEO, Mystic Aquarium

    Sarah Oktay, Executive Director, Center for Coastal Studies

    Jeff Trandahl, Executive Director and CEO, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

    Chris Bason, Executive Director, Delaware Center for the Inland Bays

    Elizabeth Gray, CEO, National Audubon Society

    Jennifer Morris, CEO, The Nature Conservancy

    Carter Roberts, President and CEO, World Wildlife Fund

    Azzedine Downes, President and CEO, International Fund for Animal Welfare

    Mike Bartlett, President, The Lobster Foundation

    Kathy Phillips, Executive Director, Assateague Coastal Trust

    Lenore Tedescao, Executive Director, Wetlands Institute

    J. Andrew Ely, Executive Director, Project Oceanology

    Kristen Yarincik, Director, National Ocean Sciences Bowl

    Kevin Smith, Executive Director, Maryland Coastal Bays Program

    Roger Fleming and Zack Klyver, co-founders, Blue Planet Strategies

    Daniel McKiernan, Director, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries

    Dear Marine Conservation Leaders:

    We are writing you as long-time conservation and environmental activists dedicated to protecting the critically-endangered North Atlantic right whale. We respect your decades of well-meaning and highly effective advocacy, educational efforts, and research.

    However, we are concerned that financial conflicts of interest are interfering with your analysis of offshore wind projects. We are particularly concerned that the construction and operation of industrial wind turbines along the Atlantic Coast will harm right whales.

    Your groups have accepted donations, sponsorships, and grants from offshore wind energy companies. Attached to this letter is a document that outlines each donation from wind companies that we believe constitutes a conflict of interest.

    Through our research, we identified 36 separate examples of donations constituting a conflict of interest. Conservatively estimated, wind companies and foundations that receive wind company money have donated nearly $4.3 million to environmental organizations. This does not include 16 donations of undisclosed value, or pledges whose status we were unable to confirm. Of this total, $1.1 million coming from Avangrid and Shell were passed through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation before being distributed to specific groups.

    Offshore wind is an industry like any other. Attention to the impacts of its industrial wind projects on the environment is a threat to corporate profits and investors. When offshore wind companies donate to environmental groups, they often frame their donations as a way to mitigate the impacts of their projects by funding conservation research. But such research may be mere tokenism that serves to distract from the immediate risks of the proposed project.

    In full disclosure, we have no financial conflicts of interest whatsoever relating to offshore wind or other energy projects, and our finances are open to journalists and others to review.

    Scientists, some of whom belong to your organizations, have repeatedly raised the alarm that the right whale population is rapidly declining. Several of your organizations signed letters in September 2020 and March 2021 stating that “[t]he best available scientific information shows that the North Atlantic right whale population cannot withstand any additional stressors; any potential interruption of foraging behavior may lead to population level effects and is of critical concern.”

    Yet many of your organizations have promoted the current administration policy to site 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines along the East Coast by 2030 despite risks to threatened and endangered marine mammals, including the North Atlantic right whale. Vineyard Wind I and South Fork Wind, which are furthest along in development, will place dozens of turbines and related infrastructure in southern New England waters now recognized as year-round core North Atlantic right whale foraging habitat. However, the mitigation requirements meant to protect the right whales during project construction are certain to fail because they are based on outdated science that assumes seasonal, not year-round whale activity. We have shared our concerns on this and other mitigation methods in an open letter, which you can find on our website.

    Environmental organizations claim that these first projects will serve as a test bed to determine the effectiveness of their mitigations but such research will take years to validate. Other projects proposed for New York, New Jersey, and Maryland have been under development for several years. To our knowledge, there is no intent to halt project development in order for the research to happen. This is an unacceptable position given the perilous state of the right whale.

    Further, researchers now acknowledge that the impacts of offshore wind development on right whales are unknown.

    However, it is documented that excess noise can cause habitat displacement, hearing loss, and stress in whales, and impede whales from communicating to one another. Additionally, the construction of wind turbines will increase vessel traffic, which could lead to ship strikes, a leading cause of whale deaths.

    The public relies on your expertise and authority to conserve our marine environment. These conflicts of interest call into question that authority.

    We request you disclose publicly the quantity and timing of all donations you have received from the offshore wind and other energy industries and encourage you to clarify your policy on donations from such industries, and to refuse future donations if they might constitute a conflict of interest.

    Our oceans need stalwart defenders now more than ever. We ask you to follow the steps we outlined and thus bravely assert your role as some of our country’s best protectors of marine species. If the public trusts you, your voices could be what saves the right whale from extinction.

    Sincerely,

    The Save Right Whales Coalition

    Mary Chalke, Cape and Islands Wildlife Conservation Alliance

    Janet Christensen-Lewis, Kent Conservation and Preservation Alliance

    Suzanne Hornick, Protect Our Coast NJ

    Si Kinsella, OSWSouthFork.info

    Lisa Linowes, Wildlife Energy and Community Coalition

    Michael Shellenberger, Environmental Progress

  3. Jim/Joel/Muddog/All –
    The challenges that the commercial fishing industry is facing today are eerily similar to a coordinated ant-fishing campaign that we faced beginning twelve or so years ago. To make what was a very complicated situation a bit easier to grasp I created the Fish Truth website.

    To set the stage, seemingly before the paint was dry on the office doors of the bureaucrats that stampeded into the Obama Whitehouse at the change in Administrations, a Setting Ocean Priorities for the New Administration and Congress Workshop was organized. To suggest that the majority of the participants in this workshop had close financial ties to the half dozen or so “charitable” foundations that had been (and for the most part still are) the leading funders of the anti-fishing campaign would be an understatement. Like the Save Right Whales Coalition, I compiled a spreadsheet tying appropriate workshop participants to their/their organization’s foundation connections when such connections existed. That spreadsheet, in *.pdf format, is available at http://www.fishtruth.net/ObamaAdminWorkshop.htm. The Save Right Whale Coalition has undertaken a similar effort with their spreadsheet showing those self-styled “ocean saviors” who have accepted funding from ocean wind development proponents.

    But on the FishTruth site I went a bit beyond this. Clicking on the Connections” link will take you to The Big Green Money Machine page, which has listings of the Foundations most active in funding anti-fishing efforts, some of the organizations and individuals who are associated with those efforts, and what I saw as the major anti-fishing efforts at the time. Clicking on the appropriate box will link you to more in-depth information.

    My goal in creating the FishTruth site was to present fairly complex information in a fairly accessible manner. In my opinion, this is what the commercial fishing industry needs to demonstrate to the public, the politicians, and the print/broadcast media the threats that it is facing from what is increasingly a questionable source of affordable sustainable energy.

    And, most importantly, an adequate budget is going to be necessary to do that.

    • muddog says:

      Nils, what an incredible job you do/did!! Time sure flies. Will be happy to relay your amazing talents to all affected by this latest attack on our hard-working fisher folk. They desperately need heard. I applaud everyone involved in this endeavor. This website-Fishery Nation is the tip of the spear. I appreciate them!!

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