Game and Fish Approves Wildlife Guidelines for Wind Power

April 26th, 2010 • Filed Under

By Tom Morton/Star-Tribune

Wyoming will monitor the wind energy industry’s effects on wildlife through guidelines unanimously approved by the Game and Fish Commission on last Friday.

The commission resisted calls from some landowners and some industry representatives who wanted to delay approval of the 65-page document because of technical issues and concerns about private property rights.

“We need a starting point,” said Jerry Galles, a commissioner from Casper. “We need you, you need us,” Galles said. “We would encourage wind developers to work with landowners.” So the commission directed the Game and Fish Department to meet with landowners who claimed the guidelines — “best management practices” — would intrude on their property.

“This is not about wind, this is not about wildlife,” said Wheatland rancher Robert Whitton. “It’s about private property rights,” said Whitton, chairman of the Renewable Energy Alliance of Landowners (REAL), a group of landowner associations that want to attract wind development in eastern Wyoming. “The intent of this document is to control what I do on my own property.”

He and half of the 30 speakers at the nearly five-hour hearing at the Game and Fish Department’s office in Casper opposed the document.

Besides the private property rights issue, they said the Game and Fish Department took a “one-size-fits-all” approach to wind development on public and private lands, and it did not publicize its work and the document.

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