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Show Priceless bald eagles recently hatched nesting pair successfully fostered a Patuxent chick in 1978 and went on to mm-m mm tarn mm mmm mm m-m m-m a raise three more foster chicks in the next few years. "They were excellent parents," Nye proudly says. mm mm mm mm mm mm mmt mm mm mm9 . i in 1 1 in ji .. I "Jy and the birds are free to fly out and gain hunting experience. The food is gradually reduced until the b birds are totally acclimated to the wild. New York claims the most successful eagle hacking program in the nation. Once a major nesting site for bald eagles, the Empire State was down to only one nesting pair by 1965, and this pair had produced only one chick since then, says Peter Nye, director of the state's Endangered Species Unit. However, a study revealed that suitable nesting habitat remained in about 40 of 70 to 80 historic nesting areas. Nye turned to Tom Cade, a scientist at Cornell University who had successfully developed a hacking technique for peregrine falcons. Using a modification of Cade's method in 1976, New York became the first state to "hack" eagles into the wild. There followed a five-year five-year experimental program during which 23 eaglets were successfully , released, and the state has now embarked on an ambitious program to hack 129 eaglets by the end of 1985. Today, there are also active hacking programs in Georgia, Tennessee, California and Missouri. Ultimately, releasing birds into the wild by hacking accompanied by preservation of suitable habitat offers the greatest promise of rebuilding populations, since many more birds can be released by hacking than by fostering. Patuxent's successful captive breeding program nearly three dozen eaglets produced since 1976 is particularly par-ticularly striking since before 1973 all other captive propagation attempts combined had produced less than 30 birds, most of them at zoos. Still, zoos such as the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., are the only places where many people can see firsthand these majestic creatures. The pair of bald eagles at the National Zoo, for instance, in-stance, has produced two chicks, the last in 1978. And recently, the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield, Mo., launched laun-ched a large-scale cap-t cap-t i y e propagation program. Working on restoring the nation's symbol to its lofty position definitely has its highs and lows. New York's Peter Nye recalls the elation he felt when the state's lone We like our eaglets to be about two-and-a-half to three weeks old when we put them in the nest because, by then, they have begun to regulate their own body temperatures tem-peratures and their chances for survival are greater." On adoption day, the eaglet is flown to the site from Patuxent early in the morning. A climber scales the tall, sturdy nest tree when the adults are away, places the eaglet in the nest and beats a quick retreat while biologists watch from afar with binoculars. "What happens next," Carpenter Car-penter says, "is just a miracle, I suppose, because 95 percent of the time the parents readily accept the chick as their own. They must be proud parents!" In just this way, 15-day-old Faith, the first 1982 Patuxent hatchling, was adopted by the only remaining nesting pair of bald eagles in New Jersey, which had not produced any offspring for six years. A few years later, Faith's sibling, Hope, was eagerly adopted by eagles in Pennsylvania; Charity, for unknown reasons, was killed by one of the foster parents in Delaware, the first time this had happened hap-pened out of 19 similar adoption attempts. Despite such minor setbacks, fostering programs have been highly successful in a number of states, including in-cluding New Jersey, Maine, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. When the availability of nests does not match the availability of eaglest, parent-reared chicks from Patuxent are released into the wild using a technique known as "hacking." In this classic falconer's method, 8-week old chicks are placed in enclosures usually atop special towers where they are fed without exposure to people. Within four weeks, the enclosures are opened By Madeline Jacobs Smithsonian News Service At three days of age, Faith was just a typical bald eagle chick, not much more than a fragile fistful of fluffy, fawn-colored fawn-colored down, chittering for food, stretching its scrawny neck and flopping its tiny wings about. But to James Carpenter, Car-penter, a wildlife veterinarian at the sprawling Patuxent Wildlife Research Center here, this first hatchling of the season looked like a million dollars. Actually, Faith and the other bald eagles hatched at this center outside Washington, D.C., are priceless. At two to three weeks of age, the eaglets are placed in selected nests in the wild where they are adopted and raised by nesting bald eagles. For the first time in the decades, Carpenter and other scientists agree, these endangered birds of prey are facing friendlier skies and brighter survival sur-vival prospects. Captive propagation and release programs at Patuxent and elsewhere are helping to replenish the - - greatly reduced ranks of existing populations. ironically, the capitve breeding program at Patuxent, the largest in the country with six breeding pairs, grew out of problems with DDT, which, during the 1950's and '60s, caused eggshell thinning and subsequent failure in hatching in many bird species. By the early 1970s, injured and sick bald eagles were being sent to Patuxent, a facility of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to be studied for environmental en-vironmental contaminants. con-taminants. Some of these birds began producing eaglets, and soon several pairs were producing healthy youngsters. Meanwhile, wildlife biologists studying bald eagles noted that in some areas of the country bald eagles, which mate for life and may live to be 50 years old, continued to return to their nesting sites, although because of contamination they almost always laid infertile in-fertile eggs or no eggs at all. Working closely with state conservation agencies, Patuxent scientists tried transplanting tran-splanting captive-laid eggs directly into these, nests, but these experiments ex-periments were largely unsuccessful. Then they tried another tack: placing very young eaglets directly into the nests. Incredibly, the experiments worked. Patuxent now has a full-fledged "Operation Match" between Mother Nature and man. But releasing chicks into wild nests is a logistical nightmare, Carpenter admits. It requires almost perfect timing, much of it beyond the control of man. "Typically," he explains, ex-plains, "when a bird in the wild with a history of reproductive failure lays an egg, biologists in that region try to determine how well the parents are incubating it. If they are doing a good job, the egg generally will be pulled by scientists and a fake egg will be put in its place after three to four weeks of incubation, so the birds will continue sitting on the nest. The egg is usually sent here where we look at it; the eggs probably fail to hatch because of environmental contamination. "Ideally, if everything is working well, we will have a captive-produced, hand-raised eaglet ready to be placed in the nest usually between three and five weeks after the birds begin incubating. Stringent laws against the shooting of eagles are being enforced. Conservation Con-servation groups are purchasing refuges to help offset the loss of wilderness habitat due to development. And, perhaps the most significantly, after an absence of many years, the birds have begun returning to major nesting sites as DDT's toxic residues have faded. Florida's population, which had dropped 90 percent in the ,1950's, has now made a complete comeback, and the number of nesting eagles in the Great Lakes region has increased by almost 50 percent since DDT was banned in 1972. The eagle's comeback in the wild is well-timed: 1982 is the "Year of the Eagle," marking the 200th anniversary of the selection of the bird as our nation's, symbol on the Great Seal of the United States. In 1782, scientists estimate, 25,000 bald eagles were flying the skies over what was to become the lower 48 states. In 1981, there were about 4,500 resident birds, according to the National Wildlife Federation. Today, Alaska, with a resident population estimated between 35,000 and 50,000, is the only state where these uniquely North American birds are not considered endangered or threatened. But Patuxent's Carpenter Car-penter says, "For the average American, knowing there are large populations in Alaska is not enough. Our goal is to restore this majestic bird to its natural, historic range. It is, after all, our national symbol." |
