Ryan Rothstein: There’s no easy answers when it comes to energy consumption and the impacts on wildlife

Being a longtime Outdoor News subscriber (and perpetually behind in my reading), a few recent stories about wind energy, and the land easements that come with them, got my attention.

They got the wheels in my head spinning in a lot of directions – not the least of which is how our personal lens of experience can shape our perspective. 

Fortunate as I’ve been to have hunted in numerous states and regions for deer, it was interesting to me to read about the impact energy development is having on deer hunting and wildlife habitat in our own state. 

Unfortunately, it also sent me down a rabbit hole that I’m not sure provides any good answers.

The social contract

At our roots, we have an unsigned, unwritten, and (mostly) unspoken contract to participate in modern society. In essence, we are provided with certain common goods (i.e., roads) in exchange for paying taxes. 

At the heart of this so-called social contract is society, which powers our economies and provides our means for living in the modern era. That society, however, is not powered for free. It runs on energy, and a whole lot of it. And that energy comes at a cost. 

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Energy boost

We heat our homes with wood, natural gas, oil, or coal. We fuel our transportation with petroleum. I’m typing this column on a couple of machines that are powered by electricity.

Good or bad, energy has literally and figuratively powered American society to where we are today. Energy consumption has brought prosperity to countries around the globe.

Physics tells us via the Law of Conservation of Energy that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Rather, it changes form.

Your car engine burns gasoline, which the engine converts to mechanical energy to move the vehicle. That gasoline had to be extracted from somewhere. And no matter the form of energy produced, almost always it’s extracted in, on, or around areas that were formerly quality wildlife habitat. 

Wind and solar

Renewable energy has been labeled “clean energy.” Solar fields and wind farms are thought to be less harmful both to us and to the environment than is extracting and burning fossil fuels. However, there is still an environmental footprint from building these solar fields and wind farms. 

Solar fields require infrastructure, and a lot of it. Panels are erected, fences put up, and suddenly acres upon acres are unusable for many wildlife species. Wind farms require massive turbines and blades, which require sturdy roads for trucks to haul in the components of these gigantic structures, and those roads must be maintained to service the turbines over time. 

According to U.S. Geological Survey studies, wind energy can have disproportionate negative impacts to certain bat and bird species. Alarmingly, several species studied were found to be declining at a population level due to wind or solar energy development. From resident birds to migratory species, impacts were noted across the spectrum. 

What should concern any hunter most of all is that most wind energy development across the nation is occurring on native prairie – the last to escape the plow but now succumbing to energy development.

Birds flying into these turbines will be the least of our worries if energy development continues to fragment and degrade what little native prairie remains. 

Further USGS studies discovered that the “wake” produced by wind turbine blades can actually alter downstream temperatures and humidity, literally causing changes to the existing plant communities from wind development. 

An ongoing study in Wyoming is finding that wind turbines are altering pronghorn behavior during migration. Although the implications of that result haven’t been released yet, it’s rarely a good thing when migration is altered. 

While they may be “renewable,” wind energy and solar energy are not guilt-free. There is a cost, in terms of wildlife, habitat, and our own aesthetic preferences. 

Fossil fuels

Fossil fuel exploration and extraction is every bit as impactful to habitat.

Studies in Wyoming examining mule deer migration and natural gas development discovered that mule deer herds showed substantial changes in migration movement following the development of natural gas fields, to the point that herds missed much of the “green wave” – the early spring green-up that such herds follow on their way back to alpine summer ranges. 

It’s speculated that this will lead to declines in population growth as herds miss out on key nutritional windows and produce fewer, weaker fawns, ultimately leading to fewer deer reproducing. 

As with renewable energy development, it’s impossible to extract fossil fuels without infrastructure development, which destroys habitat and introduces constant human disturbance in many previously undisturbed areas.   

And then there are the inevitable spills that come from moving oil from underground to facility hubs for distribution. They’ve been well documented, and the impacts are obvious, from oiled ducklings to poisoned water to contaminated soil and habitat. 

“Biofuels”

Perhaps the least discussed but arguably most destructive form of energy is corn ethanol production. Following passage of the Renewable Fuel Standard in 2007, this mandate to blend “renewable fuels” (read: corn) with gasoline led to millions upon millions of acres of native grassland being converted to cropland, often in areas that were poorly suited for corn production or cropping at all. 

Closer to home, where much arable land was already tilled, those remaining narrow windbreaks were ripped out, untold numbers of small low spots were drain-tiled, and hilltops that previously were not worth the effort were tilled under for a few extra rows of corn. 

The result has been mass destruction and degradation of grassland habitat. This has affected everything from pheasants to waterfowl to butterflies to songbirds to mule deer to whitetails.

Besides the obvious effect of habitat destruction from agricultural conversion, habitat areas that remain are now much smaller, much more fragmented, and much more likely to be degraded by fertilizer and pesticide run-off in addition to invasive species encroachment. 

Hard discussions, harder choices

Anybody who’s hunted out West has likely seen, firsthand, some of the impacts from energy development, whether wind, solar, fossil fuel, or biofuel.

Here at home, we’ve long seen the impacts of biofuel (even if we didn’t recognize it at the time), and we’re starting to see the effects from both solar and wind development. 

My own personal experience has run the spectrum. I’ve seen the impact of wind development in South Dakota and Colorado. I’ve seen the effects of fossil fuels in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Not one case has been good or positive for wildlife. 

The ranchers in both South Dakota and Colorado described how mule deer numbers went down after wind development came to town. The locals in New Mexico and Colorado told me they didn’t see as many deer as they used to once the oil pads were put in. 

And yet, despite all the impacts, what are we going to do? The hard fact is that energy is a requirement for society to continue. We’ll need to decide how much habitat destruction and wildlife loss we can tolerate to power our lives. 

These are hard conversations, and I don’t know if there are any good answers. But we all have some tough choices on the horizon.