“The wind kills all your birds,” Donald Trump, then the Republican nominee for president, told his supporters at a rally in Pennsylvania last year. It was a crowd-pleasing message for a state that’s among the largest producers of oil, gas, and coal in the country; Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, had proposed phasing out fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy sources like wind power. “All your birds: killed,” he said.

Trump’s apparent concern for birds’ welfare is almost Franzen-esque, and it predates his presidential run. A New York Times tally earlier this year found that Trump has mentioned wind turbines’ bird-killing abilities more than 55 times since 2012, including 22 tweets.

It's Friday. How many bald eagles did wind turbines kill today? They are an environmental & aesthetic disaster. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2012

Wind turbines are not only killing millions of birds, they are killing the finances & environment of many countries & communities. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2012

Trump’s avian obsession has continued into his presidency. As recently as June, he said that he wouldn’t leave Americans waiting for the wind to blow “as the birds fall to the ground.” His secretary of the Department of Interior, Ryan Zinke, recently noted renewable energy’s risks to birds in arguing against using public lands for solar power. “It kind of looks like a scene from Mad Max,” Zinke said of a giant solar panel field in Nevada. “Is that the future of having these three or four 80-foot towers with reflector cells the size of garage doors where it makes this cone, this sphere of death, so as birds go through it they get zapped?”

Given their professed worry for birds, why are Trump and Zinke now working to allow drilling within America’s largest bird nursery? Trump’s budget recommendations to Congress in May called for raising $1.8 billion in revenue by allowing oil and gas companies to lease property in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a remote, unspoiled, and biologically diverse public land where 200 different bird species from all over the world breed annually. The Republican Congress, needing revenue to pay for planned tax cuts, appears to like the idea.

Last Thursday, the Senate struck down a budget amendment that would have prohibited drilling in ANWR as a way to raise revenue. The budget bill that passed the chamber “doesn’t specifically mention the wildlife refuge,” The Hill reported, “but asks the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to pass legislation to raise $1 billion over the next 10 years and drilling in the Arctic refuge is by far the most likely way to get to the total.” The House is expected to adopt the Senate’s budget on Thursday.

