Advertisement
Wisconsin, with the nation’s third-largest population of bald eagles, provided eaglets to many other states as part of the 40-year recovery effort.
 |
** FILE ** A bald eagle sits in the shade at the Dallas Zoo in Dallas in this July 2, 2005 file photo. The American bald eagle, once nearly extinct, is making a comeback. The government will confirm that when it takes the revered bird off a list of protected species.(AP Photo/LM Otero, File) |
“Wisconsin played a crucial role,” said Kiersten Suckling, with the Center for Biological Diversity, of the eagle’s comeback from near extinction.
State conservationists hailed the announcement, though some worried the change in the bird’s status would result in greater threats to the now healthy populations.
Nationwide, the number of nesting bald eagle pairs has climbed from only 417 pairs in the entire lower 48 states in 1963 to 11,040 pairs today, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. In Wisconsin, according to survey data, the number of nesting eagle pairs had dropped to 25 in the early 1960s but has rebounded to 1,065 today. That’s third behind Minnesota with 1,312 pairs and Florida with 1,166 pairs.
For many years, the eagle, revered today as a national symbol, was shot and poisoned because it was thought to be a pest and a threat to livestock. A dramatic drop in the number of eagles in the 1960s was eventually traced to the pesticide DDT, which the birds ingested in fish. The pesticide caused eagles to lay eggs with such fragile shells they cracked in the nest. In 1972, DDT was banned and in 1978, the bald eagle was placed on the relatively new Endangered Species List.
With the protections, populations started to rebound. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service changed the eagle’s status from endangered to threatened in 1995. In Wisconsin, where the lower two-thirds of the state was devoid of eagles by the 1950s, the birds now winter by the hundreds on open stretches of the Lower Wisconsin River and the Mississippi River.
So successful was the eagle’s comeback in Wisconsin that the DNR provided baby eagles to other places in the country to assist recovery. Randle Jurewicz, a conservation biologist, with the agency’s Bureau of Endangered Resources, said the state has provided 219 eaglets to six different states for reintroduction, most recently to New York City, where the birds are being restored to the heights along the Hudson River. Wisconsin eagles now also fly above Washington D.C.
Despite the success of the recovery, some caution that diligence will still be necessary to assure the health of eagle populations.
Jeb Barzen, an ecologist with the International Crane Foundation who helps keep track of eagles along the Lower Wisconsin River, said he was discouraged, for example, that officials in Prairie du Sac last year approved construction of a condominium building adjacent to an important eagle roosting site on the river.
The eagle, though no longer listed as a threatened species, still will enjoy protections under a beefed-up Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Signe Holtz, with the DNR’s Bureau of Endangered Resources, said the act will forbid killing, selling or otherwise harming eagles, their nests, or eggs. But the act also will establish a permit program under which developers or others would not be held liable if eagles are harmed in the course of otherwise lawful activity.
Barzen said the success of eagle recovery will bring its own challenges as communities learn to balance development pressures and the health of the eagle population.
“Success brings challenges,” Barzen said. “We’re sort of like the dog who catches the car and then scratches his head and thinks, ‘What do I do now? I never really planned on this.’”
Ron Seely is environmental reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison.
