Eagle Soaring Off Endangered Species List

  • Researcher climbing up to the eagles’ nest. A pair of eaglets are nesting there. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)

The American Bald Eagle is expected to come off the endangered species list soon. Once a victim of hunting and pollution, the eagles are rebounding, but scientists say monitoring must continue, for the sake of the eagles and the sake of the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Kelleher reports:

Transcript

The American Bald Eagle is expected to come off the endangered species
list soon. Once a victim of hunting and pollution, the eagles are
rebounding, but scientists say monitoring must continue, for the sake
of the eagles and the sake of the environment. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Bob Kelleher reports:


If you’re looking at all, it’s hard to miss the bald eagles here. The
majestic birds glide overhead, or silently perch on a waterfront tree.
Their nests – made of branches – fill the treetops – sometimes ten feet
across, close to the lakes of Northern Minnesota’s Voyageurs National
Park.


Twenty years ago you might have been hard pressed to spot America’s
national symbol. Park Biologist Lee Grim says, it was obvious that
eagles were struggling.


“We saw how some of these birds were ill, and sick, and they had avian
pox and things. Something was keeping them from being healthy.”


An eagle found here in 1989 had the highest blood concentration ever
found of contaminants like the chemical PCB.


“So, we wanted to know why is that up here in Northern Minnesota, in
the middle of a beautiful, you know, almost wilderness area.”


It’s still a mystery how industrial chemicals like PCB’s get here, but
we do know what’s hurt the bald eagles in the past. The insecticide
DDT made bird eggs fragile – more likely to break under an eagles
weight than hatch. And Grim says DDT was all over the place. It was
sprayed on the region’s forests to kill insects like the spruce
budworm.


“DDT is pretty much everywhere, it has been, you know. And it’s a
pretty long lived chemical.”


At the top of the food chain, chemicals like DDT accumulate in the
eagle’s bodies. Sick eagles can indicate a poisoned environment. To
test the environment, you test the eagles.


(snd of climbing)


A naturalist is scaling 90-feet up one of the park’s White Pine trees
to the huge nest at the top. The parent eagles circle overhead –
noisily upset. There’s a pair of hatchlings – fuzzy, beaky, and
surprisingly big 8-week old bald eagles. They have bright yellow feet,
with shiny black, and what will become very dangerous talons. Soon,
one’s squirming in an orange bag, and lowered into the hands of
graduate students Faith Wiley and Katie Parmentier.


(snd of students talking about baby eagle)


In minutes, the young female is back up; short a few feathers for
mercury testing; and a little blood for other chemical tests. There’s
a pair of metal bands riveted around her ankles.


Bill Bowerman is an environmental toxicologist from Clemson University.
His testing proves that chemicals like DDT and PCB’s are slowly going
away, but chemicals were only part of the problems for bald eagles.
Man was another problem. It took decades to get people to stop
shooting eagles; or to catch them accidentally in beaver traps, but
it’s better now.


“It’s evident, when I go out to landowners that have eagle nests on
their property, that they know how to manage their eagles; how to keep
people away; and how to protect that eagle during that critical nesting
period.”


It’s believed there were once half a million bald eagles in North
America. As people spread, by the 1950’s, bald eagles nearly vanished.
In the lower 48 states, the last few hung on in places like the Great
Lakes.


In Voyageurs Park, bald eagle numbers have jumped from seven nesting
pairs in 1973, to 28 pairs today. There are more than 7-thousand
breeding pairs nation wide, but there are always new threats. One of
the nation’s first victim’s to West Nile disease was the bald eagle in
New York area zoos. Bowerman says several pair are missing now in
Michigan, and there are always new chemicals. Traces of poly
brominated flame retardants are doubling in the Great Lakes basin every
3 to 5 years. Bowerman says the chemical industry needs strict
monitoring.


“As long as we maintain our vigilance about the environmental toxicants
that are being created each year, we should be having the eagles
protected.”


Bowerman supports de-listing, but doesn’t want the birds in the
predicament they were twenty years ago. An official announcement of
the bald eagle’s de-listing is expected later this year.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bob Kelleher.

Related Links

Birders Flock to Hawk Mountain

Each fall, thousands of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey fly hundreds of miles in search of warmer climates. And between August and December, nearly 70-thousand people will climb to the top of a bird sanctuary called Hawk Mountain to get a closer look at those birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:

Transcript

Each fall, about thousands of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey fly hundreds of miles
in search of warmer climates. And between August and December, nearly 70-thousand
people will climb to the top of a bird sanctuary called Hawk Mountain to get a closer
look at those birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:


“Those of you haven’t found the osprey, it’s over there at owl’s head, naked eye here to
the right.”


On a clear day, the view from atop Hawk Mountain stretches for more than fifty miles.
But on this particularly hazy Saturday afternoon, bird-watchers are pushing their
binoculars and telescopes to the limits.


“Well, we’re making them out there, they’re coming in. It’s like you just gotta wait ’til
they get a little closer than what they typically do. They’ve been popping out of clouds
and haze all day for us.”


Doug Wood is a volunteer at Hawk Mountain in Eastern Pennsylvania. This afternoon,
he’s the official bird counter.


“We’re basically taking a lot of field information. Wind, weather, temperature, cloud
cover, wind direction. And then we’re basically monitoring the birds’ species, age, sex,
and recording it every hour.


“Look! An Osprey! And then fade to scene change.”


Researchers at Hawk Mountain have been keeping records of osprey and other migratory
raptors for more than seventy years, making it the oldest monitoring station in the world.


In the early twentieth century, hunters would shoot thousands of birds from the
mountainside each year. Today, people travel from all over the world to shoot birds with
their cameras.


Matt Wong came all the way from New Zealand to study at the sanctuary.


“Hawk Mountain is internationally renowned as a hawk watch site. And also a place
where big research actually happens. Now, not many of the locals around Pennsylvania
actually realize this, but it’s actually huge on the international scene. It’s world
recognized, and that’s one of the reasons why I came here.”


In Wong’s country, there are only two species of raptors. In America, he’s had a chance
to study dozens of varieties.


But even with so many different species populating North America, many people still
think of them as strangers or sometimes even as monsters.


“I still get, amazingly to me, a lot of people that think that these birds are out to get us.”


Volunteer Bob Owens has spent the last 20 years doing education programs at Hawk
Mountain.


“If you intrude into their territory when they have young in the nest, or something like
that, yeah, they’re probably going to chase you. As far as them killing babies and taking
them from baby carriages, this is all old wives tales. This just does not happen.”


Owens runs a small farm for a living, where he says hawks and barn owls help keep
rodents under control. But in a larger sense, Owens says there’s a lot people can learn
from these birds.


“Any three and a half pound bird that can apply four hundred pounds of pressure with its
talons is built to do what they’re doing. They are at the top of the food chain. And that’s
the other big thing that it shows us. It just opens up a door here as to all the reasons the
birds are either dropping or rising in population. What are we doing?”


Owens says in the seventy years researchers at Hawk Mountain have been counting birds,
they’ve seen populations rise and fall. Hawks and eagles are hardy birds. But even the
most successful predators can fall victim to environmental change.


Keith Bildstein is the sanctuary’s director of conservation programs. He says raptors are
like sensitive tools, telling researchers when something’s wrong with an ecosystem.


“Birds of prey are excellent biological indicators. In the middle of the last century they
told us that we were having a problem with our misuse of organochlorine pesticides,
specifically DDT. Today, they’re leading us in explorations of the spread of West Nile
Virus.”


Bildstein says because raptors are at the top of the food chain, when their numbers fall
it’s a pretty good sign that their food source is dwindling, their habitat could be
disappearing, or air quality might be suffering.


But for most of Hawk Mountain’s visitors, the birds are more than barometers of a
healthy ecosystem. According to birder Judy Higgs, they’re beautiful creatures,
especially when viewed from a great height.


“These birds are just majestic. And the other thing is that they go so far. You know,
some of these birds are going to South America!”


Higgs first climbed the mountain in 1970, when she was a student at nearby Kutztown
University. Before moving out of state, Higgs used to come to Hawk Mountain daily…
she stills visits on weekends whenever she can.


“I used to do work in the morning, come here in the afternoon, go home, and finish my
work at night so I could be here.”


By day’s end, Higgs and her fellow birdwatchers count more than 600 raptors. During
the fall season, as many as 70-thousand predatory birds, from vultures to falcons might
pass by on their way to distant points.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.

Rescuing Injured Raptors

Owls, eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey have it rough in the modern world. They have to navigate electric wires, cars, and loss of habitat. A handful of volunteers in the Midwest take on the responsibility of nursing injured birds back to health… The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder has the story of a wildlife rehabilitator in Pennsylvania:

Transcript

Owls, eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey have it rough in the modern world. They have to navigate electric wires, cars, and loss of habitat. A handful of volunteers in the (Great Lakes region/Midwest) take on the responsibility of nursing injured birds back to health… The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder has this story on a wildlife rehabilitator in Pennsylvania:


(natural sound fading up)


Wendy Looker’s back yard serves as a temporary home for 120 birds, and a variety of other exotic animals. Walking into a sixteen foot cage, Looker opens a box and tries to convince the two small birds inside that it’s dinner time.


“These are fledgling kestrels and they’re just learning to catch food. So we’re tossing baby mice in there just to mimic movement, they’re eating mealworms and crickets, and other things they’re learning to catch.”


By working primarily to rehabilitate birds of prey, or raptors, Wendy Looker has become something of an expert in the region. With a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and some graduate work in animal behavior, Looker has spent most of her life working with animals.


“I worked in zoos for a number of years, and I particularly developed an affinity for owls. I guess I, for whatever reason identify with cranky animal that seem to be misunderstood by people. And I just figured at some point in time, maybe I’d dabble with research, and dabbling became 24-7.”


Ten years later, Rehabitat – a 40-thousand dollar a year non-profit organization, run out of Looker’s back yard – is going strong. Each year Looker and a handful of local volunteers help hundreds of birds recover from injury. It’s often dirty and difficult work for no pay, but Looker says she feels a responsibility to the birds.


“Very few of these animals come in as a result of a failure to thrive, a natural selection sort of a thing. It’s almost always human related, so I feel very strongly that they deserve the opportunity to be given a chance to get back out there.”


Looker says many of the birds brought to her have been hit by cars, have flown into glass windows, or have been caught up in discarded fishing line. But the number one cause of injury for birds is what she calls CBC, or caught by cat.


Even a minor cat bite can be lethal as bacteria infect the wound. Looker says keeping house cats in the house would eliminate countless bird injuries each year.


Feeding the birds at Rehabitat takes 6-thousand dead rodents every week, donated from a local research facility. Looker says in nature, or living in the back of a barn, birds of prey are effective mouse hunters. A single barn owl could save farmers thousands of dollars in crop damage.


“The average owl out in the wild eats about a thousand rodents a year himself, so they’re incredibly efficient and valuable in controlling the rodent population. Eating a thousand rodents, and a single rodent can do about 28 dollars worth of damage to agricultural crops, so that’s a 28-thousand dollar bird, and that’s without him having a family.”


Looker says using rat poison to deal with rodents might not be as effective as having a few raptors around. And if there are birds of prey in the area, it’s likely that they could be susceptible to poison as well.


“Most rat and mouse poisons accumulate in the body of the rodent it takes several days for the rodent to die, and he’s wandering out in the open and it’s very easy pickings for the birds. So we get birds that come in here with what we call secondary poisoning, and they’re seizuring and sometimes we can turn them around and sometimes we can’t.”


“We must have had babies hatching… and let’s go check those babies out….”


While inspecting the newborn barn owls, Looker says some animals spend just a few months at Rehabitat, while others have become lifelong residents due to permanent wing or eyesight damage.


“Our standards for release are extremely high. These birds have a tremendously difficult life out in the wild and they need to be 100% perfect. Because just to have one feather missing compromises the feather next to it, throws them off balance, and may be the difference between life and death for them.”


Not every bird can make it in the wild. A few birds with disabilities such as amputated wings or partial blindness can be used for educational programs. But a number of birds have to be put down every year. Looker says it wouldn’t be difficult to find people willing to adopt injured birds, but Raptors are wild animals that don’t make good pets – and there are few locations with the proper facilities to care for non-releasable animals.


Birds of Prey are federally protected migratory birds, but rehabilitation is a private endeavor. With licenses from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, Rehabitat and similar facilities in the state do all the work of nursing injured wildlife back to health for release in the wild


“There are some restrictions in what rehabbers can and can’t do. Obviously we don’t do surgery, but pretty much everything else medically is done on site. It’s pretty grungy work and it’s pretty labor intensive, but it’s also extremely rewarding.”


(natural sound up)


Looker says she’d love to put herself out of business by convincing people to avoid activities which put birds at risk, such as using rodent poisons or letting housecats roam the neighborhood. But as long as there are birds in need of help, there will be people like Wendy Looker to take them in.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.


(natural sound out)

Migrations

Changes to our world – and to our environment – have been a matter of course throughout history. But knowing that offers only limited comfort to Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Mike VanBuren:

Transcript

Changes to our world – and to our environment – have been a matter of course throughout history. But that knowledge only offers limited comfort to Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Mike VanBuren.


Many years ago, when I was a rookie newspaperman working in northern Michigan, I often drove from my home in Mancelona to Whitefish Point on Lake Superior.

Whitefish Point was a glorious place to visit – particularly during the spring and fall, when raptors, waterfowl and songbirds were migrating through the Great Lakes region. Hundreds of thousands of birds funnel through the Point each year, thanks to land and water features that create a natural flight corridor.

I enjoyed going there to walk the beaches, watch the birds and see the giant freighters pass by on their way to and from the busy locks at Sault Ste. Marie.

Whitefish Point was a peaceful place in those days. And I was often alone, as I stood on the shore with my face against the invigorating Superior winds.

But something unsettling has occurred in the two decades since I made those pilgrimages. The Point has been discovered by large flocks of tourists. And the narrow road that reaches north from Paradise is sometimes clogged with cars, SUV’s and tour buses.

I returned to the Point recently, hoping to find the same peace and serenity I’d enjoyed there as a young man. I was pleased to discover that the old lighthouse – first lit in 1849 – had been carefully restored, along with a handful of whitewashed outbuildings.

That would have been enough for me.

But developers apparently thought the Point needed something more to attract visitors. They built a new facility to house the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, along with a large gift shop – complete with meeting space and flush toilets. Wooden walkways had also been laid across the sandy dunes to allow greater access to the surrounding forest and beach.

I didn’t see many birds that day, although the folks at the tiny Whitefish Point Observatory could probably have told me where they were. I did see a lot of people, though.

“All things must change to something new – to something strange,” said Longfellow.

You’d think I’d be used to it by now – that I’d no longer be surprised by change. But I am. It always leaves me feeling a bit disoriented.

In my more lucid moments, I know the Great Lakes region will continue to evolve. And I know I’m as much a part of this process as real estate developers and gift shop proprietors.

Some change is even good – although the definition of “good” varies from person to person. Life itself is an uncertain migration – with constant shifts in our needs, attitudes and relationships to the outdoors.

I think it has always been that way.

As I retreated that day from the Point and drove south toward the Mackinaw Bridge, I thought about the Native Americans who lived beside Lake Superior long ago. Like me, they probably watched earlier generations of hawks, eagles and owls cross Whitefish Bay – and marveled at their beauty and grace.

I can imagine their ghosts, skirting the shores of the bay in birch bark canoes on cool moonlit nights – searching for some familiar landmark that will lead them home.

Perhaps one day mine will do the same.

***Mike VanBuren is an environmental writer who lives near Richland, Michigan. ***

Biologist Fosters Bald Eagle’s Return

In the 1960’s, the bald eagle was in trouble. There were only about 4
hundred birds living in the U-S And in some states, pollution had wiped
them out altogether. But the bald eagle has made an impressive comeback.
The U-S Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced plans to remove it from
the endangered species list. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen
Kelly reports, it’s good news for the scientists who fought to save this
bird:

Utility Workers Build Osprey Nests

A threatened species of raptor is getting extraordinarycooperation from Wisconsin power companies this year. The Great LakesRadio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports on how powerline workers arebuilding nests for osprey: