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The dispute over windpark development on some of Germany’s most idyllic landscapes is heating up rapidly and massively. And should the dispute continue on its current trajectory, it won’t be long before the ugly contraptions get stopped for good.

The dispute reached a boiling point recently with windpark opponents suspecting green energy activists of poisoning birdlife in order clear the way for an unobstructed windpark permitting.

According to south Germany’s online Stuttgarter Nachrichten, a number protected red kites have been found poisoned by the E 605 herbicide – in rural areas that just happen to be sited for the installation of large-scale industrial windparks.

Under Germany’s wildlife protection laws, wherever the predatory red kites are found to be nesting, green energy developers are promptly denied permits to install their turbines. But if red kites are nowhere to be seen, then wind-park developers stand a far better chance of getting the go-ahead. Angry windpark opponents are now pointing the finger at the windpark proponents for the poisoning. The Stuttgarter Nachrichten writes, however, that there’s no proof.

The Stuttgarter Nachrichten writes that a number of poisoned red kites were found at several locations in southwest Germany.

‘Systematically’ rare predatory birds are being killed wherever they find themselves in the way of large windparks, some wind-power critics are now surmising. That in the recent days in Pfalzgrafenweiler in the district of Freudenstadt also a dead peregrine falcon has been found, which according to police died from chloralose, just makes the situation more explosive.”

But windpark proponents are calling the accusations unfounded, and claim that poisoning the birds would even have the opposite effect: The bird would be put higher up on the endangered list, and thus make permitting of wind turbines even more unlikely. Other “green” activists call the accusations “speculation”.

The Stuttgarter Nachrichten ends its article writing that one fact is certainly beyond speculation: “The gloves have come off when it comes to the dispute over the transition to green energies.”