The professor is the only human being who has ever lived in intimate contact with that rare and remarkable bird:
The California condor’s slow 20-year climb back from the brink of extinction has long been a fragile not-quite-success story in the conservation world. So when the news came on Friday that developers of a wind-energy project near the Mojave Desert would not face criminal charges if the blades killed a single condor, environmental groups expressed grave concern. ...
It has been 46 years since the condor — a bald, black carrion-eater that can fly nearly three miles high on wings that span up to 10 feet — was declared endangered. In that time, the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service has almost never waived criminal penalties for the “taking,” or killing, of a condor. ...
The Alta East project is designed to generate 153 megawatts of electric power, bringing the overall capacity developed or managed by Terra-Gen closer to 1,500 megawatts of wind power. ...
There are 234 condors living in the wild mountains of central California. ...
via www.nytimes.com
If one megawatt can power 1000 homes then 153 megawatts can power a small city, 153,000 homes, and reduce CO2 emissions by about 90,000 (~153*.225*2600 tons per MW) tons per year. If the social cost of carbon is $25 per ton then the annual value of the wind power in terms of climate change is about $2.25 million.
My read of the article says that the risk to the condors is small, the wind farm is on the edge of their range, so if the risk to one condor is 1% (a WAG, but see this), not allowing the wind farm to be cited would place an implicit value on a condor of $2.25+ billion.
Am I getting these numbers about right? I'm sure that the answer to that question is no, so where am I going wrong? [note: the above "analysis" has been edited in response to comments]
*You can watch it here: http://www.tvland.com/episodes/16388/beverly-hillbillies-the-bird-watchers. In 1966 the California Condor was five years away from being place on the endangered species list.
