Breaking News
N.J. helped bald eagles take flight
August 1st, 2007
by: CHRIS KASSAR
Asbury Park Press
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced that it would remove bald eagles from the Endangered Species list.
Bald eagles now number 11,040 breeding pairs in the continental United States and have returned to every state and the District of Columbia.
New Jersey has 65 pairs.
There were an estimated 500,000 bald eagles when the Pilgrims arrived.
It was adopted as the national symbol in 1782.
Bald eagles, however, were unfairly branded vermin and a threat to livestock and valued for their feathers.
They were fed to hogs in Maine, shot from airplanes in California, poisoned in South Dakota, and hunted under a 50-cent bounty in Alaska, where 100,000 were killed between 1917 and 1950.
The 1940 Bald Eagle Protection Act prohibited the taking, possession or commerce of eagles.
But their habitat continued to be logged, plowed and converted to farmland and housing.
Eagles were extirpated from many states long before the pesticide DDT became prevalent.
DDT dealt the final blow, thinning their eggshells and those of other fish-eating birds, causing their eggs to break during incubation.
By 1963 there were only 417 pairs in the lower 48 states.
Their habitat finally received protection with the 1967 Endangered Species Act.
The listing of bald eagles, Peregrine falcons and brown pelicans was a major factor in the decision to ban DDT in 1972.
The bald eagle was reduced to 10 nesting pairs in New Jersey by 1959 and a single pair by 1971.
In 1982, the state’s only active bald eagle nest at Bear Swamp failed to produce viable eggs for six consecutive years because of DDT contamination.
State biologists removed the only egg, artificially incubated it, and returned the fostered eaglet back to the nest.
Artificial incubation continued at the Bear Swamp nest until 1989, when a new female, apparently free of DDT residues, took over and was able to hatch her own eggs.
In 1983, state biologists began a hatching program that introduced 60 young eagles from Canada by 1991.
The statewide population rose to 65 pairs by 2007.
The Edison Wetland Association reports increased sightings in central New Jersey, along the Raritan River and even around population centers and landfills.
The Edison group has worked to restore contaminated sites along the river and say landfills provide some of the less-developed areas in a populous state.
As New Jersey celebrates the bald eagle’s success, it is worth noting the other species in the state that the Endangered Species Act is rescuing.
The list includes the short-nosed sturgeon, Atlantic piping plover and the dune plant seabeach amaranth in which it nests.
Along with the bald eagle, the arctic and American Peregrine falcon and the brown pelican have recovered and fly in New Jersey skies.
The fin and Humpback whale and Atlantic green, Kemps Ridley, Loggerhead and Leatherback sea turtle all occur in New Jersey waters.
These sensitive marine species still face threats and are declining in other parts of the world but enjoy special U.S. federal protection and are thus improving along the Atlantic Coast.
Each of these unique and irreplaceable creatures, thanks to the Endangered Species Act, may yet have a chance.
Chris Kassar is a wildlife biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation organization with 35,000 members dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. He lives in Mahwah.
