Photo above shows wind turbines on Mars Hill, Maine in 2006.

UPDATE: By a 4-2 vote on January 14, 2008, Maine's Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC) asked its staff to prepare a recommendation rejecting Maine Mountain Power's plan for a wind power project proposed on Black Nubble mountain.

The action alert below was posted in fall 2007.

Will you help Maine Audubon fight an uphill battle for wildlife-friendly wind power in Maine?

Wildlife and Black Nubble

LURC's Role

Global Warming

Maine Audubon is leading the way for wildlife-friendly wind power projects in Maine.

We currently support the construction of 82 wind turbines at two sites in Maine that could generate clean energy for 77,500 Maine homes. (Read about Kibby Mountain and Stetson Mountain.)

But we're fighting a proposal to blast the top off Black Nubble Mountain in western Maine, build miles of roads, clear acres of forest, and truck up and anchor 18 turbines on the mountain's ridge.

We need your help.

Black Nubble is a special mountain in a protected mountain area that's not the right place for industrial development.

Yet Maine Mountain Power, LLC, a joint venture of California- and Maine-based companies, has signed on multiple investors and mounted a fierce public relations and political advocacy campaign to win approval from Maine's Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC).

Maine has much better choices for wind power.

Mainers will come to deeply regret it if LURC commissioners approve this unprecedented project's permanent devastation of an exceptional natural resource.

Please help Maine make the kind of smart clean-energy choices now that we won't regret later.  Let's make our children proud in the years to come.

It is essential that LURC hear from you.

Black Nubble Mountain is the wrong place for a wind power project or any industrial development of this magnitude.

• Black Nubble is one of six mountains that together form the most significant mountain range in the state, with only Mount Katahdin an additional member of the club. Rising above 3,500 feet, this rare Maine mountain is part of a tiny fraction of Maine land (one-fifth of one-percent) at that height.

• The mountain provides habitat for 18 rare or declining species of birds, bats, and other animals, including the Bicknells thrush, a rare bird found nowhere in the world but the northeast United States. Habitat also exists on Black Nubble for the Canada lynx, which is on the federal list of threatened species, and the Golden eagle, which is on Maine's list of endangered species.

• Blasting and clearing the forest habitat of Black Nubble to build miles of roads and install turbines will permanently destroy and degrade habitat and alter the mountaintop's ecosystem.

• In the eastern United States, Black Nubble has the highest-ever recorded rate of birds migrating at night, which is when birds and bats by the thousands have been killed by collisions with turbines in other places. Data suggests collisions are more likely to occur on forested ridge lines than any other region. The span of wind turbines today is bigger than the wingspan of a 747 aircraft.

• Maine Mountain Power has refused to include a decommissioning plan in its application. This is of grave concern from a precedent-setting point of view. In the event wind power projects are abandoned in the years to come, does Maine want its mountains littered with ghost turbines?

LURC's Role

Mainers will come to deeply regret it if Maine's Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC) makes a precedent-setting decision that industrial development belongs at the top of Maine's most rare and special mountains.

Maine law requires LURC to insure that development within its jurisdiction is consistent with its Comprehensive Land Use Plan and legal standards.

Permitting this project will set the bar so low that all mountains in Maine outside of those currently protected under public ownership will effectively be deemed suitable for wind-power development.

Global Warming

Black Nubble Mountain is not the kind of place conservation-minded people ordinarily would think makes sense to blast, destroy, and turn into the site of an industrial development.

Yet at a time when state and national organizations including Maine Audubon are working on clean-energy initiatives in the face of global warming, some ask, Don't we need to build wind power projects wherever we can?

The good news is that we don't. It is possible and essential not to unduly harm the very environment we want to protect, and to build wind power projects where they make sense, using strategies that reduce potential harm to wildlife.

In Maine, two such projects are ready to go, pending LURC approval. Maine Audubon has endorsed them both. (Read about Kibby Mountain and Stetson Mountain.)

Maine can make smart clean-energy choices now that we won't regret later. Let's make our children proud in the years to come.