Where Eagles Dare Perch
Posted December 26, 2007 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places, U.S. Law and Policy
One evening, almost a decade ago, I had dinner with some friends of my parents, who own a home high above the Connecticut River in Essex. I remember standing on their balcony and, as the sun set and we looked over the water, a bald eagle slowly worked its way up and down the shore, searching for fish. That was the first bald eagle I had seen in the Northeast (really, the first wild bald eagle I had seen outside of Alaska). I was reminded of the eagles in Connecticut by an AP story in today's Newsday about the bird-watchers who flock to the Housatonic River's Shepaug Dam each winter to sea the bald eagles congregate. Like their cousins in Essex, Connecticut is now home to a flourishing eagle population.
And Connecticut is not the only place in the lower forty-eight where eagles now thrive. With the exception of some parts of the southwest, where bald eagles still struggle, eagles are doing remarkably well. In fact, fittingly enough, I recently saw a bald eagle cruising along the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.
Things are going so well for the bald eagle that they were taken off the federal list of endangered and threatened species earlier this year. While bald eagles will remain protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, the eagle's recovery is inspiring evidence of what can be accomplished when people put their mind to conserving wildlife. Here's hoping we see more stories like the bald eagle's in the coming year.
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Comments
Adam Kamerer - JoyChaser.com — Dec 26 2007 09:31 PM
It makes me glad to see an endangered species come back to the brink. I'm curious though...it may go without saying, but what sort of impact do you think the eagle's status as a national symbol have on the efforts to revive the population of the species?
Andrew Wetzler — Dec 27 2007 09:38 PM
I think there's no doubt it had an impact, but but more important to the eagle's recovery was the decision to ban certain pesticides (particularly DDT)in the United States and a concerted effort to protect eagle habitat. A number of other birds of prey have benefited from similar efforts despite their less iconic status.
Adam Kamerer - JoyChaser.com — Dec 27 2007 11:13 PM
That's true. In fact, a biologist friend of mine once told me that environmentalist groups will sometimes petition to have a species added to the endangered species group not because the species itself is particularly in danger of extinction, but because it shares a habitat with another creature that is harder to get backing for: people are more willing to save fuzzy mammals than to save insects, for example.