On May 6, 2024 the Cascabel Conservation Association joined the Center for Biological Diversity in sending a report to both the BLM and the USFWS requesting their attention to SunZia’s violations of their Plan of Development relative to nesting birds.

The Avian Protection Plan (APP) of the Plan of Development (POD) requires nest buffers for different types of birds (Figure 5). Zone-tailed hawks and grey hawks are non-eagle raptors and require a 300m buffer if a biological monitor is not present (Figure 5). Two of the identified nests are within 300m of tower pad sites S1-108/2 and S1-108/3 (Figure 1). Construction at these tower pads sites must be halted immediately and the APP Program Coordinator must be contacted.

Additionally, helicopters are regularly traversing Paige Canyon to transport SunZia construction workers and equipment (Figure 6) and are flying directly over these nest sites. In the “Travel to work sites” section of the APP, it states that “if a nest is found, an avoidance buffer will be established appropriate to the species, in consideration of the intensity and duration of activities that may cause disturbance” (emphasis added, POD, p. B3-8). Given the extreme amount of disturbance caused by helicopters and the frequency of flights in Paige Canyon, it is necessary to determine a minimum altitude for helicopter flights above these nest sites.

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