Help Save the Owls

Help Save 'The Little Island That Could'!    "You don't know what you have until it's gone."
Photo By Elliot Ferguson, Kingston Whig-Standard ©

Please join birders and naturalists worldwide to save Amherst Island in Lake Ontario, the Owl Capital of North America, famous for wintering raptors and home of 'Owl Woods'.

Many residents of Amherst Island have been working for nearly a decade to prevent an large-scale industrial wind project from being built on the island.  This project will turn this small island into an industrial wasteland, destroying the unique ecosystem that so many rare, endangered and threatened species call home.

Now, more than ever, we need your help.  We are currently in the middle of a legal battle to challenge the approval of the project by the Ministry of the Environment.  

Click here to read about the legal battle in a local newspaper .

Please give today to help save the raptors and owls. 

This weekend 18 Snowy Owls enchanted birders from around the world. Four Snowy Owls with transmitters tracked by Project Snowstorm  continue to enthral. Perhaps your best memory of birds on Amherst Island is of your first Boreal Owl or the Lark Bunting or Short-eared or Long-eared Owls at dusk . . .

Islanders continue to challenge every aspect of Windlectric’s ill-conceived proposal. Most recently Windlectric's "expert" witnesses at the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal accused those submitting Blanding's Turtle observations of "fakery" and "staging". As a result the Tribunal agreed to hear 30 additional witnesses who get to describe their encounters with Blanding's Turtles on the Island.

The legal fees associated with fighting this proposal are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  We need your help.

We are committed to convey to the Tribunal that as Margaret Atwood said so well ‘Amherst Island is the wrong place, the very wrong place for wind turbines’ but our funds will soon be exhausted.

Please give generously. 

In an unprecedented partnership, Nature Canada, Ontario Nature, the Kingston Field Naturalists and the American Bird Conservancy joined together to oppose the turbine project that threatens birds and other wildlife on Amherst Island, located in Eastern Lake Ontario. “Ontario’s decision to approve Windlectric’s 26 turbine project on Amherst Island—one of the province’s crown jewels of nature—is another in a string of ‘tough on nature’ decisions to build wind energy projects in Important Bird Areas in the region” said Stephen Hazell of Nature Canada. “Given Ontario’s failure to consider the cumulative effects of these projects on nature, the Environmental Review Tribunal should overturn the approval of the Amherst Island Project as well as that of White Pines. And given the clear breaches of the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act, the federal government should in future apply its environmental assessment process to wind energy projects.”

We are dismayed that we have to fight our own government to help save the jewel of Lake Ontario. Islanders and friends have donated over $225,000, an amazing commitment on an Island with just 400 residents. If everyone who enjoyed the Island's magic and believes it should be preserved donated $50 we would soon achieve our new goal of $200,000 to fund our legal challenges.  Any amount is sincerely valued.

PLEASE ACT TODAY.  Time is running out and we need your support to continue this fight.

Check out our facebook page to follow the progress of the tribunal and other updates on the fight.

Visit our website for further information or to contact us.
www.protectamherstisland.com

Please share widely with fellow birders and naturalists around the world.  Together we CAN stop this.

  Photo credits to BirdsByKim.com ©