America's Bird

This weekend is the United States' two-hundred and fortieth birthday and to keep with the patriotic spirit I will be talking about our national bird and symbol, the bald eagle. We will also talk about the success story that is bald eagle conservation. Bald Eagles are majestic birds that are really amazing to see in the wild. I remember one day we went our to Saylorville Lake for ornithology lab; we saw well over fifteen bald eagles. The eagles were perched near the lake, flying over the lake, and catching fish. The ice on the lake was breaking up it was a beautiful sight. One of my other favorite encounters with a bald eagle was in Yellowstone. I was walking with a group of my friends back from the hotspring we had went to see on a river. As we walked back to our van we saw an eagle in the distance and it started to fly toward us. It flew directly overhead and we got a clear picture of how majestic it was. After reading these anecdotes you would probably find it hard to believe that bald eagles and other birds who eat a lot of fish faced extinction.

Post World War II the use of the chemical dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) rapidly increased for agricultural purposes. DDT was an effective measure to eliminate insects on crops as it was a pesticide. In 1972 Congress banned the use of DDT for agricultural purposes as it was shown to have negative effects on human health and the environment. In 1973 the Endangered Species Act was passed and in 1978 bald eagles were added to the list of federally endangered or threatened species. Bald eagles had very low numbers during the mid and late twentieth century due to poisoning and hunting of the birds that occurred before they were put on the ESA and the pollution that was occurring. Bald eagles, pelicans, osprey, and peregrine falcons suffered heavily from the use of DDT. When DDT was sprayed it killed the bugs which may fall into water where fish will eat the dead bugs. The DDT becomes concentrated in the fish and the birds eat the fish and large quantities of DDT are in their system. The DDT makes the eggs of these birds fragile so when mothers sit on them they smash them and kill the future off the species. It was estimated that there were only 412 nesting pairs in the 48 contiguous United States in the 1950's, way down from the 300,000-500,000 birds present in the 1800's.

The DDT ban allowed these species to recover to the more sustainable levels we have today. Eagles are also protected under other laws such as the federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection of 1940 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act as well as state legislation. The bald eagles are no longer listed on the Endangered Species Act since 2007 since they had done so well. Now there are over 10,000 nesting pairs in the lower 48 and that number will probably grow. The birds have made recoveries across the continent. Some of the most recent recoveries are coming from the eastern coast of the continent. New York has completed their conservation plan and around the Chesapeake Bay there are now birds where there were none forty years ago. The State of the Virginia also now has over 1,000 nests where there were only 20 pairs in the 1970's.

The future for bald eagles looks much brighter than they did in the last decades. It is great that these birds are making a comeback but they still face threats from human encroachment as well as lead poisoning from animals hunters have shot. They also hit things that move or don't and have had much of their habitat destroyed. These threats are serious but the bald eagle is recovering. There may not be hundreds of thousands of birds on the continent anymore but numbers continue to rise. I am glad that these majestic birds will be around for years to come and remain the national symbol of the United States.

Articles

New York Recovery

Virginia Recovery

Chesapeake Recovery

Florida Eagle Conservation

All About Birds

Pictures

Eagle In Air: Lindsey Broadhead (this is the one we saw)

Eagles on a Log

Eagle Over Water