For years, power lines have been electrocuting golden eagles and other raptors. Thanks to a recent court decision, utility companies are now being held liable.

Of all the ways humans accidentally kill birds of prey, none is more needless than electrocuting them with ill-designed, poorly insulated power lines. Guided by special agents Roger Gephart and Leo Suazo of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, I glimpsed the extent of this problem last October, in central Colorado. To our west: the Rocky Mountain front, glowing with yellow aspens, dusted with the season's first snow, glittering with new roofs. To our east: low flights of mallards. Overhead: a lethal power line. 

Gephart pointed to a new pole. The old one had been destroyed when a great horned owl touched a live wire, completed a circuit by touching another live wire or maybe a grounded wire, then hung batlike while at least 7,200 volts crackled through its body, incinerating it along with the pole. Not much left of that evidence.

The frozen birds in the back of Gephart's truck were more intact. The bald eagle had no beak; it had melted off. The golden eagle, feet clenched in the classic reflex of electrocuted raptors, had no feathers; they had caught fire. The immature red-tail, still clutching a coachwhip by the tail, had carried it to the top of a pole, intending to eat it. Six inches from the snake's head there was a black-rimmed hole where the electricity had entered, killing it along with the bird. The type of injury can tell you how the victim was electrocuted. One of the golden eagles I inspected at the federal wildlife repository near Denver had a burned tail, which meant it had touched an uninsulated jumper wire, which carries current from one circuit to another. Three others had burned underwings, which meant they had bridged the gap between two hot wires. A female golden can have a 90-inch wingspan, yet the utility industry suggests 60 inches of space between energized surfaces, and even this inadequate standard is neither mandatory nor commonly met.
 

Electric companies can make power poles bird-friendly, but until last summer they had scant motivation to do so. Now this has changed, thanks to the perseverance of Suazo and Gephart and two Justice Department litigators willing to chart new legal ground-Joseph Mackey, an assistant U.S. attorney, and Robert Anderson, a special wildlife prosecutor. On August 12, 1999, the government prevailed in its first criminal prosecution of a utility for violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Moon Lake Electric Association pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $100,000 in penalties, to retrofit its poles, and to serve three years' probation. So far at least 170 raptor carcasses, about three-quarters of them golden eagles, have been recovered under Moon Lake lines that serve western Colorado and eastern Utah. Environmental consultant Rick Harness, hired to show Moon Lake how to retrofit, found 14 goldens in a day.

 Electrocutions can be violent, causing major outages and starting prairie and forest fires. Sometimes all that's left of a bird are its talons, still gripping the wire. The top joint of the right wing and most of the left foot had been blown off of a live, caged red-tail I encountered at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, near Denver. In a video Gephart gave me, a northern goshawk lands on an uninsulated transformer (the large cans that step down power from distribution lines to household current). There's a crackling, then an effusion of sparks, during which the bird twitches and convulses; finally, it drops to the ground. In the summer of 1997, a transformer burned up an osprey nest and both hatchlings in southeastern Massachusetts. When the transformer was moved to another pole in the spring of 1998, it killed two adult ospreys. Falconer Kirk Hohenberger of Billings, Montana, told me about the demise of "Bud," his favorite peregrine and one of four falcons he's lost to power lines: "Bud perched on a hot wire and touched a grounded wire with his tail. It burned his feet right off his legs."

 Transmission towers-those marching giants hefting lines of at least 115,000 volts that hum and buzz and make your car radio sputter when you drive underneath-are rarely a problem, because the long insulators and wide gaps between wires prevent even eagles from completing circuits. The bird killers are the less-sinister-looking distribution facilities-i.e., lines that carry 34,500 volts or less. They can be made safe for birds by intelligent design or by retrofitting old poles with plastic insulators that slip over bare wires and conductors and by bolting on triangular "perch guards," which prevent birds from touching down on the dangerous parts of crossarms. The U.S. Army appeared unconcerned in 1994 when the Fish and Wildlife Service started finding electrocuted eagles and hawks at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a 17,000-acre Superfund site now managed as a national wildlife refuge. But then a fourth-grade class discovered a fried golden under a transformer at the visitors' center. "You could see the kids' footprints in the mud," says Suazo. He told the commander that the Army wasn't going to look very good if the story hit the press. In a little more than a year, the Army retrofitted 320 poles at a cost of $94,000. By policy, power poles on most federally managed land are supposed to be bird-friendly, though even the Fish and Wildlife Service doesn't know how many of its 520 national wildlife refuges meet the standard. Retrofitting, however, is strictly voluntary. All the service can do is punish companies once they've killed birds, something it has done only three times. Colorado is in better shape than most states thanks to the work of Suazo and Gephart; yet we were never more than a mile or two from deadly power lines. Driving north from Colorado Springs on Route 25, Suazo pointed to a junction pole where the line made a 90-degree turn. What made it dangerous was the bare jumper wires that carried juice from the top east-west crossarm to the bottom north-south crossarm. "Think there's a bird under that one?" I asked. "Let's see," said Suazo, pulling onto the soft shoulder. In a clump of sage directly under the crossarms we found the wing and wrist bone of a raptor. 

Such poles keep killing for decades, and with 116,531,289 distribution poles in the United States, most with difficult access, bones pile up unseen. This pole was about 50 miles south of Route 470, a new bypass skirting Denver and Littleton. Seven years ago, when someone noticed an active golden eagle nest in the project's planned route, the highway was safely diverted. Cost: $2 million. Unfortunately, no one thought to check the power lines until a woman who lived several hundred yards from the nest reported a dead golden in her yard under an uninsulated transformer. A squirrel had climbed the pole, gotten zapped, and fallen between the can and the wood, where it dangled seductively, luring the eagle to its death. After recovering the carcass, Suazo checked a pole 30 feet from the nest and found the remains of another golden.

 Harness, North America's leading authority on how to make power lines bird-friendly, showed me a line, retrofitted with perch guards and insulation, that ran along the western boundary of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal-winter habitat for scores of bald eagles and a magnet for golden eagles, northern harriers, and great horned owls, as well as ferruginous, rough-legged, red-tailed, and Swainson's hawks. That was the good news. The bad news was that outside the fence, no more than 40 feet away, a parallel line was still killing birds. On many of the poles the crossarm had been needlessly mounted on the top so that the three wires ran on the same plane and could be more easily bridged by unfurled wings. In addition, bare jumper wires were positioned on top of the crossarms instead of underneath. As we approached one such pole, a red-tail landed between two hot wires, and Harness cringed until we flushed it. "If that had been a golden, we might have seen some fireworks," he intoned.

 Despite advice from the Fish and Wildlife Service and the utility industry's Avian Power Line Interaction Committee (APLIC), lethal poles are still being installed. The label on one of the most dangerous Harness and I encountered proclaimed that it had been treated with preservative in 1997, which meant it had been planted that year or, more likely, in 1998 or 1999. Even as the industry progresses under APLIC guidelines, it regresses by switching from wood to steel poles. With large trees in short supply, steel is becoming as cheap as wood, and it's lighter and impervious to rot and woodpecker damage. But unlike wood, steel is conductive, grounding birds that perch on it. "I've seen steel poles that are incredibly lethal," declared Harness, "and they've been built within the last two or three years. A lot of them are being shipped overseas." Harness directed me to Monte Garrett, who, as senior environmental analyst for PacifiCorp, is largely responsible for that utility's relatively good progress in raptor protection since 1992, when 25 dead golden eagles turned up under only four miles of its lines in Wyoming. "We don't have any metal distribution poles yet," Garrett told me, "but we may get to that point. If it comes to that, we're going to have an internal fight. I think I'm going to win, but a lot of utilities are building them. Researchers from Spain just had an article in The Wildlife Society Bulletin on the dangers of steel. Who starts increasing the awareness but researchers from another country?" 

Just outside the Arsenal, Harness called my attention to a pole supporting three shoddily insulated transformers, one of which had a melted bushing cover, probably from contact with a bird. On the ground we found bones and feathers. A hundred feet from the bald eagle management area, Harness showed me a lethal pole that could have been made safe for birds and linemen by fitting a grounded guy wire with a $4 porcelain insulator.

 Most utilities have no clue about dangers to birds or legal liabilities to themselves. In 1994 Harness found himself in southern Texas on an environmental consulting job, so he drove out to the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge to see if he could spot one of the endangered Aplomado falcons the Peregrine Fund has released there. To his astonishment he noticed that the refuge was ringed with lethal power poles. The utility fixed them when he told its officers that if a falcon got fried, they could face possible jail time under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act. 
 

"Thousands and thousands" is all you get out of Suazo and Gephart if you ask them how many birds are electrocuted in the United States every year. There's no way of counting, because there's no mandatory reporting system. "Much of the data contained in utility files are largely unavailable for review," comments raptor specialist Robert Lehman of the U.S. Geological Survey. "What is known is that raptors are still being electrocuted at unacceptably high levels."

 And it's not just a national problem. In Spain's Do-ana National Park, power lines are the primary killer of the endangered Spanish imperial eagle. At least 19 species of raptors get electrocuted in Germany, including eagle owls, which are thought to have declined for that reason. Raptor electrocutions have been documented all over Europe. Uninsulated power lines are thought to have contributed to the decline of Egyptian vultures in Sudan. Hundreds of cape vultures have been electrocuted in South Africa. Swainson's hawks, migrating south from the United States, are dying on power poles in South America. In the former Soviet Union, power poles are a horrific killer of raptors, but there-as in so many other nations-no one has money for retrofitting.

 It's not as if killer power poles had just been discovered. "In Utah, 47 electrocuted eagles were counted beneath 12 miles of power lines," wrote George Laycock in the September 1973 Audubon. The year before, the Fish and Wildlife Service had implemented a nationwide mortality reporting system, but it was discontinued in 1975 for reasons no one can ascertain. 

America learned of the electrocution problem by accident in the early 1970s, when the Fish and Wildlife Service investigated some 1,200 bald and golden eagle deaths in Colorado and Wyoming. Most of the victims had been shot or poisoned to make public land safe for domestic sheep, but many appeared to have been electrocuted. The numbers appalled service biologists, who dispatched personnel to walk power lines all over the West. Of 60 autopsied goldens in Idaho, 33 had been electrocuted. A short-eared owl and 37 golden eagles were found under a single line near Delta, Utah, and elsewhere in the state, 594 raptors (some dead five years) turned up under just 250 miles of lines. A quarter-century later, on October 4, 1999, I asked special agent Bryce Findley if things had improved in Utah. He told me there is no way of knowing because the industry isn't looking and he's the only federal wildlife officer in the state. But he knows of 128 bird electrocutions since May 1998, 35 of them eagles. And last spring, when he walked half a mile of PacifiCorp line near Enterprise, he found one red-tail, one great horned owl, and three golden eagles. All three species seek out power lines to hunt from.

 After the electrocuted eagles were found in the early 1970s, the Fish and Wildlife Service commissioned studies; hosted workshops; partnered with the National Audubon Society, the Edison Electric Institute, and the Rural Electrification Administration; and cut deals with power companies, including a memorandum of understanding that allows PacifiCorp to bury electrocuted hawks and owls and then do its own mortality reporting. (Suazo vows the memorandum will be rescinded.) With most companies the result has been that if a pole is seen to kill a few raptors, it generally gets retrofitted. But the vast majority of poles aren't seen to kill anything, because they're never checked, and new killer poles are going up even as old ones are being fixed.

 There has been much oozing and gushing and little discipline by the Fish and Wildlife Service. For example, in March of 1995, at the service's behest, PacifiCorp received the Guy Bradley award from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for its work in retrofitting killer power poles. While the company has come a long way, it still admits to killing an average of 30 golden eagles a year, and those are just the ones it finds. In 1992, after bald eagles were electrocuted by Virginia Power, the utility put on an advertising blitz about all the good work it was doing making its lines safe for raptors. Even as Fish and Wildlife Service agents were threatening it with prosecution, bureaucrats in the service's Washington office were sucking up the snake oil and recommending the company for an Interior Department award. (Since then Virginia Power really has done good work.) Last March Fish and Wildlife Service director Jamie Clark presented Virginia Power, PacifiCorp, and each of the other 13 utilities that belong to APLIC with citations for "Conservation Service." Such recognition may be deserved to some extent, and it may be an effective tool when you have fewer than two law-enforcement agents per state, but the attending hype promotes the fantasy that voluntary controls work and that the industry and the service are on top of the electrocution problem. In fact, seven years ago, when Harness started research at Colorado State University for his master's thesis on raptor electrocutions, he couldn't get funding because of the universal perception that he was beating a dead horse.

 It wasn't until 1993 that the service finally cited a utility for violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Special agents Gephart and Frank Kuncir had investigated the electrocution of 10 raptors-Swainson's hawks and great horned owls-by a single power pole owned by Pacific Gas and Electric in California's San Joaquin Valley. Under other poles Kuncir had discovered four golden eagles and 32 red-tails, barn owls, and ravens. Eventually, the company paid $1,500 in fines and agreed to retrofit. The only other ticket was issued on May 1, 1998, to Jack Mager, owner of Sand Point Electric, which serves a fishing village in southwest Alaska and whose lines had been killing about a dozen bald eagles a year. Mager paid a $500 fine for violation of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and agreed to retrofit, but he tells me he was grievously abused and singled out as an example. "Not true," counters case agent Jill Birchell. "Mager said his company was small, that they did not have money to fix the problem, and that if we were concerned, we should provide the funds. I put the company on notice, gave them information on how they could fix their poles. Basically, they disregarded that information, and a couple more eagles got killed." 
 

While tickets may work for small companies, they don't always get the attention of the big ones. That is because if a ticket is paid, the violation is treated as a petty offense, with no admission of guilt. So the industry has been content to pursue business as usual, retrofitting when it gets yelled at and pounding itself on the chest for its work and awards. Now, however, it has been badly frightened by the example of Moon Lake.

 Making an example is what Moon Lake CEO Grant Earl claims the Fish and Wildlife Service had in mind when it came after his company. But Suazo says the service took the case only after it received a request from the Colorado Division of Wildlife, which for years had vainly tried to get Moon Lake to fix its killer poles, and that Moon Lake took three months to respond to his letter advising it of the problem. "One pole had killed four ferruginous hawks and a golden and still hadn't been retrofitted," he declared. "When a pole would kill an eagle, or usually two, they'd finally do something about it. I told them that was unacceptable, but they refused to implement any meaningful protection. Basically, they blew us off."

 When Moon Lake's counsel argued for dismissal on grounds that the statutes applied only to "poaching, hunting, and other intentionally harmful acts," District Court Judge Lewis Babcock delivered a blistering, precedent-setting, 34-page denial. "The plain language of the Acts belies Moon Lake's contention that the Acts regulate only 'intentionally harmful' conduct," he wrote. The opinion was everything Suazo, Gephart, and Justice's Mackey and Anderson had hoped for-the first case law for electrocution of raptors and a shot heard around the world.

 Now Suazo can't keep up with the phone calls from utilities. "Are we doing anything wrong?" they keep asking him. He says they really listen when he tells them that if their lines continue to kill eagles, court-tested law now provides that, in addition to company fines as high as $500,000, their officers can be convicted as felons, thereby losing their right to vote, paying personal fines of $250,000 each, and getting two years in the slammer. But Suazo and Gephart caution against declaring victory the way it was declared in the 1970s. They see the Moon Lake case as a turning point only if their agency roars as well as purrs, and only if the public gets involved in policing the industry. Many rural utilities are cooperatives, owned by their members. This gives people who care about birds a voice in determining how money is spent. "Go talk to your directors," advises Suazo. "Raise hell." Moreover, deregulation of the power industry now provides an opportunity for electric customers to choose which company supplies them with service. Ask companies to show you their annual reports. If they're spending money to make their lines bird-friendly, it should show up as a line item. Act now while the industry is paying attention.

 I got a feeling for the kind of attention Moon Lake is paying when Harness told me about the electrocuted golden eagle that had been found under a company line early on October 6, 1999. On October 7 Harness checked the pole to determine the nature of the problem. To his horror, he saw that it was a retrofitted pole. Something had gone dreadfully wrong; his safeguards weren't working. Despondent, he sought out the linemen.

"No, no, no," they told him. "We retrofitted it yesterday afternoon." 
 

Next issue, Incite columnist Ted Williams will tackle ATVs and snowmobiles.