The Bald Eagle: newly official, officially back from the brink

(WHTM) -- December saw a couple of interesting pieces of news about the bald eagle - one national, one local but with statewide implications.

On December 24 President Joe Biden signed a bill officially designating the bald eagle as the country's national bird. Congress designated it the national emblem in 1782 when it became part of the Great Seal of the United States, but although we all grew up thinking it was the "national bird", it had no such designation.

On the local level, in a Facebook post dated December 31 Raven Ridge Wildlife Center announced they took in and treated 18 bald eagles in 2024.

That number is amazing enough; what makes this truly stunning is they treated three times more bald eagles than existed in the entire state in 1980. That year, the Pennsylvania Game Commission counted only three nesting pairs.

So why did bald eagles almost die out? Despite it being a national emblem, a lot of people considered it a nuisance bird, preying on farm animals. In some places, they were routinely shot on sight. The birds also suffered habitat loss, as logging removed the large trees they preferred for nesting.

But the bald eagles' biggest nemesis was a chemical - dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, better known (for obvious reasons) as DDT. Introduced as an insecticide in the 1940s, It proved remarkably effective at controlling insects (at least until the bugs developed an immunity.) But DDT broke down very slowly, giving it time to migrate up the food chain from insects to animals (including humans) and especially to birds. Many birds, including bald eagles, started laying eggs with shells so thin they'd break when the birds tried to incubate them.

DDT was banned in the United States in 1972, and eagle populations began to recover - slowly. From 1983 to 1989 the Pennsylvania Game Commission gave nature a boost by importing eagle chicks from Canada. The birds were raised on Haldeman Island on the Susquehanna River, and released into the wild.

How successful has reintroduction been? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Commission maintains a map of eagle nests across the country. In Pennsylvania, the map shows 577 nest sites!

By 2007, bald eagle numbers increased to the point that they were removed from the endangered species list. They are, however, still protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

The biggest threat bald eagles now face is lead poisoning. The lead mostly comes from lead bullets, which shatter into pieces when they hit a target. Eagles ingest the lead fragments when they scavenge dead animals or gut piles. They can also get lead from fishing tackle in fish.

According to the American Eagle Foundation, "A lead fragment the size of a grain of rice is lethal to a mature bald eagle, meaning that a standard 150 grain lead bullet can poison 10 eagles."

Tracie Young, rehabber for Raven Ridge, tells us that of the 18 bald eagles they took in during 2024, all but two tested positive for elevated levels of lead. Some had levels higher than their testing device could measure. (And no, not all of the poisoned eagles survived.)

The best way to deal with this problem is to remove the source; switch from lead ammo and fishing tackle to non-toxic metals. The change is happening slowly - non-lead alternatives were more expensive than lead, and initially hard to come by. But prices are dropping, and the safer products are becoming easier to find. Most importantly, the changeover is increasingly being supported by hunters and fishers themselves. One may hope that someday having to treat our national bird for lead poisoning will be a thing of the past

To learn more about the Game Commission got the eagle chicks to replenish the species, click here.

To view the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Commission eagle nest map, click here.

To read the American Eagle Foundation article on lead poisoning, click here.

To view a Game Commission video on lead poisoning, click here.