Stop Killing our Eagles

The petition of the undersigned residents of Tasmania draws to the attention of the House the killing of Tasmanian eagles by an ever-increasing number of wind turbines.

• The threatened Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagle (Aquila audax fleayi) and White-bellied Sea-eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster) are protected species with no proven protective measures in place for wind farms.
• The most recent Threatened Tasmanian Eagles Recovery Plan (2006-2010) is out of date and applies inappropriate safeguards.
• The EPA Board grants permit conditions to wind farm operators allowing eagles to be killed.
• Every year, an unknown number of these raptors are slaughtered, maimed and displaced by the State's ever-increasing number of wind turbines.
• This is in addition to those that collide with or are electrocuted by powerlines and poles, killed on our roads, poisoned or shot.
• World's best practice for minimising turbine blade collisions, using minimum 3.7km nest buffers, is well known to State regulators, but is not being implemented.
• Regulators have no strategic plan to site wind farms away from areas of high eagle activity; instead they are sited where developers choose.
• The current 1km buffer distance of turbines from eagle nests was developed 35 years ago to protect nests from disturbance by forestry operations and does not protect nests from +240m high wind turbines.

Your petitioners therefore, request the House to call on the Government to defer all wind farm developments in this State, until world's best practice is adopted by the EPA Board and an updated Threatened Tasmanian Eagles Recovery Plan is finalised.