A golden eagle died in a wind turbine plant on January 16 at the Bernagues site in the foothills of Larzac, in Lunas (Hérault). The death, deplored by many associations, was confirmed at 20 minutes by the Valeco group, owner of the Montpellier company Energie Renouvelable du Languedoc which operates this site.
For the associations, there is no doubt: the raptor was killed in full flight, by the blades of a wind turbine. For the moment, there is nothing to confirm this with certainty. Investigations are underway at the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB). An autopsy was also carried out. The GPS beacon, with which the raptor was equipped, should make it possible to retrace its last moments with precision.
“We have very few doubts that a golden eagle that falls at the foot of a wind turbine is not because it has had a heart attack while passing in front of it”, however confides Simon Popy, ornithologist and President of France Nature Environnement (FNE) in Languedoc-Roussillon. FNE filed a complaint.
“It’s a real disaster”
The loss is all the more dramatic as the raptor was the male of the only pair of this species living on the Escandorgue massif. Now only the female remains. This is the first time that an eagle has died on this site. In the same place, in 2020, a black vulture, a protected species, however died in the same conditions.
There are many associations involved in this fight, including anti-wind turbines. The death of this eagle “is scandalous, because the hunting territory of the only couple had already been fragmented by the fifty wind turbines of Lunas and Joncels, deplores the collective All our energies (TNE). Will all these protected species all die, chopped up by the blades of wind turbines? “It’s a real disaster,” adds Marjolaine Villey-Migraine, spokesperson for the Collective for the Protection of Landscapes and Biodiversity 34/12.
Valeco indicates, for its part, that “many measures have been put in place to monitor the park day and night in order to protect birds and bats”.
Entangled in a legal imbroglio
The disappearance of this bird of prey is all the more infuriating for the defenders of the environmental cause that they alerted the public authorities for a long time on the presence of this couple in the sector. Indeed, the Bernagues site has been at the heart of a legal battle for several years. According to environmental associations, the existence of a pair of golden eagles was not mentioned in the studies carried out before the construction of the wind farm. They demand its demolition, while the operator fights, on his side, so that the wind turbines continue to turn.
After several contradictory decisions handed down by the courts for several years, on January 11, the Court of Cassation finally agreed with the opponents: the wind turbines must be dismantled. But the soap opera is not over. A new hearing is scheduled for Friday, before the Court of Appeal of Nîmes (Gard).