The Plight of the Tasmanian Wedge-Tailed Eagle - A Farmer's Lament

 

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For about twenty minutes today I stood and watched a pair of Tasmanian Wedged Tailed Eagles play and hunt over our pastures and forest. I’ve been lucky and privileged to be able to do this regularly since we moved here over six years ago. I’ve seen up to five Wedgies at once catching the updrafts on the steep slopes of our farm, playing, but also watching for a stray wallaby or rabbit. I’ve been close by when they swoop on their prey and come within several metres of where I am standing. The sound of the wind rushing over their wings has to be heard to be believed. I’ve observed their keen focus from a tree limb, watching me intently while I drive a tractor, work the sheep with the dogs or just walk in the pastures, hoping that I’ll flush a quick and tasty meal out of the grass for them.  I’ve even witnessed them arrive within minutes of gunfire or the dogs barking knowing that a free and effortless feed is afoot.   I will even place dead lambs or sheep on slopes with a good updraft in the belief it will keep them from pursuing road kill and risk death by careless drivers. I never tire of watching them and my heart is always filled with joy and hope to see such magnificent creatures in my own backyard. Joy to experience their aerial performance and hope that they will endure into the future.

 

We have several hectares of forest and after observing numerous times the adult Wedgies and an obvious juvenile descend into our trees, I am sure there is a nest hidden within.  It is too much of a coincidence to witness this regularly for there not to be a nest or roost amongst the dense, tall, stringy barks on a precipitous slope.  It is the perfect location for them to rear young, hunt nearby pastures and soar effortlessly on the constant updrafts from Gunns Plains.  We have fenced off and excluded stock from the forest so as not to offend these regal guests on our land.

 

Today however while I watched again the Wedgies above our farm I was saddened – saddened, as it was only two of them and that a few days ago there were three. I hope the missing Wedgie was just a juvenile that has been sent to find his own territory. I despair to think the missing one has been killed on the road or amongst power lines.  As I looked across Gunns Plains to Riana though, I know the future of these endangered giants is threatened by a whole new menace and it breaks my heart to think how short sighted, ignorant, greedy, selfish and stupid my own species can be.

 

Where I was looking across to Riana, I saw the border of the proposed North West Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) and envisaged the ridge with its mass of Wedge Tailed Eagle killing, 300m tall turbines and transmission lines dominating a landscape that has been the home and hunting ground of these special birds since creation.  If the 300km/h blade tips don’t slice and dice them, then the air pressure differentials caused by the blades speedy rotation will implode their lungs. That’s the upside for them, as it is a relatively quick death. The alternative is the slow decay and agonising death the Wedgies will endure, due to the numerous toxins leached from the turbine blades epoxy and fibreglass and the leaked waste of the mechanical workings of the generators contaminating the entire ecology upon which these majestic monarchs of the air depend. And don’t forget the quick boiling of their blood as they staddle a transmission line.

 

I know the pair of Wedgies that frequent our backyard also travel many kilometres around this area and no doubt hunt the opposite slopes and pastures of the proposed REZ as frequently as they do on our side of Gunns Plains. 

How can any sane human with the least bit of a functioning brain believe that these birds are expendable in the name of “Climate Change” and the quest to dominate the surface of the planet with the false hope of “Renewables?”  It is an obscene ideology that can’t see the forest for the trees; that it can willingly push to destroy not just the Wedge Tailed Eagles but numerous other species that are endemic and vital to our ecology.  The Wedgies are huge, magnificent and bleeding obvious in flight but what about the other creatures who don’t claim the lime light in the same manner?  Are we to also sacrifice these on the pyres of “climate alarmism”?  This climate catastrophising is about control, greed, manipulation and destruction for the benefit of a few at the cost of the many.  That cost includes the destruction of our ecology and environment. 

I am minded of the Joni Mitchell song and how pertinent it is to the ideological fanatism of the climate zealots…

 

“They paved paradise, put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot
(Ooh, bop-bop-bop-bop, ooh, bop-bop-bop-bop)

They took all the trees put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar an' a half just to see 'em.”

 

Will our children and grand children be paying “a dollar and a half” to see the stuffed carcasses of Wedge Tailed Eagles amongst all the other exhibits of extinct wildlife?

Will our children and grandchildren be asking us, “Why did you destroy the ecology to supposedly save the planet?

 

What will your answer be?

 

- Concerned Farmer