THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 30, 1995 TAG: 9505300052
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ALLIGATOR RIVER, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 127 lines
In the top branches of a towering pine tree, a symbol of successful stewardship preens her wide, dark wing feathers.
Gold-flecked eyes scan the swampy shorelines of the Alligator River, watching her mate ride the warm winds.
Bald eagles are back.
Ecological efforts are working. The birds of prey are more numerous than they've been in decades. An American emblem - once in danger of becoming extinct - is recovering and reproducing in the wild.
``It's been at least 25, probably 30 years since anyone has recorded nesting bald eagles in this area,'' Adam Kelly said last week from atop a bathtub-sized wooden platform he erected near the center of the Alligator River, across from the eagles' home.
``In the 1960s, DDT just about wiped them all out. The pesticide caused all their egg shells to thin, so when the birds sat on them, the shells just broke beneath them. Eagles couldn't produce young for many, many years.
``Now, we've got a pair with a 5-week-old chick. We've also seen a male juvenile nearby. They're certainly making a comeback around here.''
Kelly, a raptor biologist working for the Air Force, spent eight hours searching creeks and tributaries of this North Carolina river for signs of bald eagle populations. At the end of a hot, frustrating day, he and a co-worker finally found the tangled, tell-tale nest. Two more all-day excursions gave them their first local glimpse of the regal, hook-beaked birds last month.
In early May, the baby was born. It's already almost a foot and a half tall. Within weeks, the downy, brown chick will be bouncing on the branch outside its nest, testing out the family launch pad, learning to fly.
``American bald eagles have been a wonderful success story,'' said Jim Fraser, a wildlife sciences professor at Virginia Tech.
``People have stopped shooting and trapping them, for the most part. Federal chemical bans and preservation programs have begun bringing them back. But we're not out of the woods entirely,'' Fraser warned from his Blacksburg, Va., office.
``Most of those birds are on private land now. Their habitat is being threatened. It will need to be protected long-term if the bald eagles are going to survive.''
In 1963, the Audubon Society estimated that 417 pairs of bald eagles lived in the continental United States. Jody Millar, bald eagle recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said 4,452 pairs of adult eagles have been recorded this year in the 48 continental states. An additional 40,000 birds make their homes in Alaska. And 1994 counts jumped 10 percent over the previous year's population.
``Bald eagle numbers have been doubling every six or seven years since the late '70s,'' Millar said from her office in Rock Island, Ill., last week. ``The ban on DDT in 1972 - and the passage of the Endangered Species Act in the late 1970s - have helped tremendously. We're seeing more and more juveniles, too, which is a good indicator of reproductive health.''
On July 4, 1994, wildlife specialists began considering a request to take bald eagles off the federal endangered species list.
Millar and other biologists predict the eagles will become downgraded to a ``threatened'' classificiation by the end of the summer.
``Reproduction rates are almost back to what they'd been before DDT began wiping them out,'' Tech's Fraser said. ``Their recent survival rates have been extraordinarily high. But if the Endangered Species Act and other federal wildlife protection programs are cut out, then bald eagles and many other animals could be in for big trouble.''
In Virginia, 170 nesting pairs of eagles have been found this spring - mostly along the Chesapeake Bay. North Carolina wildlife researchers have found 12 breeding pairs - seven in the northeastern part of the state, including Pasquotank, Chowan, Washington, Hyde, Beaufort, Tyrrell and Dare counties.
``Bald eagles prefer fresh, undisturbed shoreline, both for building their nests and for perching to hunt,'' Fraser said. ``They eat mostly fish when they can get it. In the winter, they switch to waterfowl and carcasses. The Chesapeake Bay is one of three major eagle population centers on the East Coast - along with Florida and Maine. We get birds from both those territories, too. They all cross over here during migration.'' Full-grown birds migrate mostly to Alaska; the fledglings stay behind.
Even when the national population bottomed out, a few sets of eagles remained in secluded coves and streams along the Chesapeake Bay, Fraser said. In North Carolina, however, bald eagles all but died off. So state wildlife specialists took the birds' fate into their hands.
``Bald eagles pretty much disappeared from most of North Carolina in the late 1950s,'' said Dennis Stewart, the biologist for Fish and Wildlife's Alligator River and Pea Island refuges. ``In the mid-1980s, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission began reintroducing eagles to the wild. Some were bred in captivity and some were transported from other areas. Since then, we've been seeing an increase in their populations.''
Between 1983 and 1989, 27 eagles were released over Lake Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, in east-central North Carolina. Some of them may be those now nesting in the state. Bald eagles are at least 4 or 5 years old before they began to breed. They mate for life.
``Mattamuskeet was the only place in the state that we released bald eagles,'' said Tom Henson, the coastal project leader for the state Wildlife Resources Commission. ``It was the heart of the eagle's historic range. There's good food and plenty of water nearby.
``I think they're coming back on their own pretty fast now.''
Biologist Edward Zakrajsek agreed. A partner of Kelly, he spends two days a week watching the four bald eagles along Alligator River. His observations - and, especially, the new chick - give him hope, he said.
``Bald eagles have been officially endangered since 1971 - since there was such a thing as federally recognized endangered animals,'' Zakrajsek said as the female eagle dived through the skies at perhaps 75 mph and boldly snatched a fish from a low-flying osprey. The osprey had been guided toward the nest by the male eagle, and as the osprey dodged that threat, the female blindsided the fleeing bird.
``What we're seeing here is the first wave of the self-reintroduction of bald eagles in this area,'' Zakrajsek said. ``Unless people interfere again, the birds should be back to stay. Man is the only natural enemy of bald eagles.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
DREW C. WILSON/Staff
In Virginia and North Carolina, eagles again are nesting and
reproducing in the wild. Still, their habitats - private lands - are
at risk.
Graphic
STAFF
NORTH AMERICAN BALD EAGLE
SOURCE: Peterson's Field Guide, wildlife and raptor biologists
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB