Amherst Island wind project hears final submissions 

“This island is a stronghold for species that is under pressure,” he said of the local bobolink population.

Gillespie saved his final submission for the Blanding’s turtle, which has taken a special place in ERTs in this area.

The closing of the Amherst Island ERT came the day after a similar process rejected a wind energy plan for Prince Edward County.

On Monday, an ERT upheld an appeal of a nine-turbine project by the Prince Edward County Field Naturalists (PECFN), saying the installation of gates on access roads won’t adequately protect the population or habitat of Blanding’s turtles.

Gillespie said island residents called as witnesses have testified to have seen the turtle on the island.

While the Stantec report showed turtle habitat limited to coastal marshes, about 30 per cent of the turtle sighting have been in other parts of the island.

Since the turtles don’t go more than 250 metres from their habitat to nest, Gillespie said either one-third of the island’s turtles were “Kenyan Olympic turtles that run all over the place” or there is turtle habitat in other parts of the island.

“If you are going to keep denying that there is other habitat out there, you were not protecting anything,” he said.

Gillespie said the addition of gravel access roads will increase the potential of turtles getting killed there through collision, predation and poaching.

“If you kill one female turtle every year, year and a half, you will extirpate the species,” he said.

With the prominence of the Blanding’s turtle in this case and the Ostrander Point ERT, Arlen Sternberg, a lawyer for Windlectric Inc., focused much of his closing submission on the turtle.

Sternberg said APAI had not met the legal standard to have the project cancelled.

He said there is no evidence of regular, sustained Blanding’s turtle presence in the wind turbine project area, nor is there evidence that the project would harm the turtles enough to damage the island’s population.

Sternberg said the turtle is largely an aquatic species and nests close to water, and grassland fields, which cover much of the island, are not suitable to nesting.

Stantec Consulting, the company hired by Windlectric to conduct environmental surveys of the island, spent 800 hours of field work over five years where the turbines and access roads are to be built, Sternberg said.

Eighteen biologists surveyed within 250 metres of proposed turbine locations and last year conducted 10 surveys specifically looking for turtles, he said.

That work produced no Blanding’s turtles or nest sightings in the project area.

“If Blanding’s turtles had any meaningful presence in those fields, they would have been seen,” Sternberg said.

The majority of the Blanding’s turtle sightings have been close to the coastal marshes, he added.

Of the 62 sightings, 44 were close to the coastal marshes, and 33 of the sightings bordered the Long Point Marsh.

Almost all – 54 out of 62 – were between late May and early July when the turtles were nesting, he said.

Sternberg rejected Gillespie’s suggestion that there are more wetlands or fish habitat on the island that provide more habitat for the Blanding’s turtle.

While turtles usually nest within 250 metres of water or wetland habitat, Sternberg said they don’t always do that.

“Occasionally, turtles go on longer nesting forays,” he said.

The new access roads are to be built on private property in grassland farm fields, so it is highly unlikely that turtles will cross those fields to nest on the roads.

APAI made a leap, Sternberg said, from stating there could be turtles in the project area to there being turtles killed on roads.

“Their case falls because of it,” he said.

Sternberg said between Long Point Marsh, Nut Island Duck Club Marsh and Webb’s Bay Marsh there are 600 hectares of very good Blanding’s turtle habitat on the island. All of those wetlands are outside the project location and the coastal dunes are on the opposite side of wetlands from the closest project component.