|
The bald eagle is a major player in American conservation history. Chosen by Congress as the nation’s symbol in 1782, it became a casualty of the country’s social and technological transformation. The bird was subject to widespread extermination efforts, even fed to hogs in Maine. And when the story of its poisoning by DDT was popularized by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a nascent environmental movement rallied around it: the eagle was one of the first species listed under the 1967 precursor to today’s Endangered Species Act.
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE
PROTECTION STATUS: Formerly endangered; delisted 2007
YEAR PLACED ON LIST: 1967
CRITICAL HABITAT: None
RECOVERY PLAN: Chesapeake Bay (1982), Southwest (1982), northern states (1983), southeastern states (1984), Pacific states (1986), southeastern states revision (1989), Chesapeake Bay revised (1990)
RANGE: Throughout North America, south to northern Mexico
THREATS: Hunting, habitat loss, contamination from DDT application and lead shot, and disturbance
POPULATION TREND: A quarter- to a half-million birds inhabited the North American continent at the time of European arrival. Reduced to a mere 416 pairs in the lower 48 states by 1963, the species was entirely extirpated from many states. With legal protection, numbers rebounded to an estimated 5,748 pairs by the time the eagle’s delisting was first proposed in 1999. By 2007, breeding pairs had climbed to about 11,040.
|
SAVING THE Bald Eagle
The bald eagle’s comeback has been a strong one — a testament to the power of the Endangered Species Act. Leading up to the delisting of the eagle on August 8, 2007, the Center released a Web report detailing, state by state, the most comprehensive and current population trends of bald eagle breeding pairs. Our report generated hundreds of articles about the eagle in newspapers across the country.
The bald eagle has been managed under five recovery populations, one of which is the southwestern, or desert nesting, bald eagle — geographically, behaviorally, and biologically distinct from bald eagles elsewhere. There are only 39 breeding pairs in Arizona, nesting primarily along the Verde, Salt, and Gila rivers. While on the national level bald eagles have made a remarkable recovery, in the Southwest they still suffer from high mortality and low reproductive rates and depend on precious, rapidly disappearing riparian habitat. For these reasons, the Center has called for the desert nesting bald eagle to continue to be managed separately and remain on the endangered species list.
We are also working to protect Arizona’s Verde River, one of the most endangered rivers in the nation and the best remaining habitat for Arizona’s eagles. And a Center lawsuit successfully prevented a lakeside condominium development on the shores of Big Bear Lake, California, which threatened bald eagle nests.
ACTION TIMELINE
+ CAMPAIGN LINKS
NATURAL HISTORY
+ MEDIA
+ DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS
+ DETRITUS
Contact: Kierán Suckling
|
RobinSilver.jpg)