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Bald Eagle Could Come Off Endangered List, Agency Says

Posted on: Saturday, 18 February 2006, 09:00 CST

By STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

From staff and wire reports

WASHINGTON - Declaring victory in the decades-long effort to save the bald eagle from extinction, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday it would revive a stalled effort to remove the majestic avian predator from the federal list of endangered and threatened species.

"The recovery of the bald eagle, our national symbol, is also a great national success story," agency director H. Dale Hall said in a statement.

The move comes amid a steady increase in the number of breeding pairs in North America. Several environmental groups have said they could support de-listing the bald eagle as long as other protections remain in place and the government carefully monitors populations for years to come.

Environmental scientists took the opportunity Monday, however, to warn against recent moves in Congress that they said would weaken provisions of the Endangered Species Act.

"Recovering an endangered species is not easy," said Doug Inkley, senior science adviser at the National Wildlife Federation. "It takes a long time and a lot of effort, but with appropriate laws and resources we can continue to achieve success."

When the first Europeans arrived in North America, an estimated 100,000 pairs of bald eagles populated the area that is now the lower 48 states. By 1963 that number had dropped to 417 pairs - the result of widespread use of the eggshell-thinning insecticide DDT and rampant development in bird breeding areas.

Today the number of breeding pairs is estimated at 7,066, with the birds thriving in 49 states including Alaska, the one state in which they were never listed as threatened. Bald eagles are not indigenous to Hawaii.

Virginia has seen its eagle population boom in recent years, reaching a record 453 nesting pairs in 2005. The birds also produced 600 chicks last year, another record, said Bryan Watts, executive director of the Center for Conservation Biology, a branch of The College of William and Mary.

Still, Watts said he is not completely comfortable with the government's proposal to end endangered-species status. For one, only about half of the state's eagle population exists on protected lands, Watts said - far short of what the federal recovery plan calls for.

"The birds have been great, but that's not the issue now," he said. "The issue is real estate and whether we can set enough aside for future management of this species."

In the Chesapeake Bay region, federal plans called for between 300 and 400 pairs of birds to be re-established; Virginia and Maryland have easily eclipsed that count, Watts said, estimating the Baywide population today at about 900 pairs.

The heaviest concentration last year in Virginia was along the Rappahannock River, where 125 pairs were seen. About 100 pairs were noted on the James River, 50 on the York River and about 30 pairs on the Eastern Shore, Watts said.

In conjunction with its plan to de-list the bald eagle, the wildlife service said it would propose voluntary guidelines and a regulatory definition of the term "disturb" to help landowners and developers understand the protections that will still apply even after the birds are no longer listed as "threatened."

Those additional protections stem from two long-standing laws - the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act - that have specific provisions outlawing the killing or selling of bald eagles or the disturbing of the birds or their nests or eggs.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife and director of the wildlife service under former President Clinton, said she was gratified to see that the proposed regulatory definition of "disturb" appears to encompass the full range of human activities that might have an effect on the birds' ability to reproduce.

Yet she and others said they would withhold final judgment on the plan until they saw the language spelling out the government's "voluntary guidelines" that will help officials interpret the language in the other two eagle-protective laws.

A wildlife service spokesman said that language will not be available to the public until it is published in the Federal Register on Thursday.

The Fish and Wildlife Service first moved to de-list bald eagles in 1999, but the effort stalled - in part because of concerns about how to reconcile that step with the language that would remain in force under the other two laws.

This story was compiled from reports by The Washington Post and Pilot staff writer Scott Harper.

Source: Virginian - Pilot

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