Where Birds of Prey Find Rest, Recreation : Injured Eagles Who Can Soar No More Find a Haven in Wisconsin

The days of soaring are over for the big caged birds of Eagle Valley. On damaged wings they hop awkwardly from roost to roost and look out over the bluffs along the Mississippi River, a flyway for hundreds of their healthy brethren.

The wounded bald eagles of Eagle Valley are part of a nationwide drive to keep the national symbol flying, a campaign that appears to be succeeding.

One of the big birds flaps its good wing vigorously as Terrence Ingram, wearing heavy leather gloves, lifts it out of its cage in the breeding barn to show a visitor.

Ingram, 47, founder and director of the privately funded Eagle Foundation--which is deeply in debt--is a Guernsey cattle breeder, Dorset sheep breeder, commercial beekeeper, former college physics and math teacher and longtime eagle enthusiast. He lives about 60 miles away, just over the Wisconsin border, in Apple River, Ill., where his foundation is headquartered.

He talks of the necessity of expanding the eagle’s habitat and population and of the cooperation he gets from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other eagle research centers in his artificial insemination program.

On Migration Path

The foundation’s 1,440-acre nature preserve in this southwestern corner of Wisconsin is on the path of the annual north-south migration of eagles. From a 350-foot-high bluff overlooking the river, visitors often can look down at eagles flying above the water, even in winter because the warm water of a nearby power plant tempts some of the birds to stay the year around.

Eagle Valley was founded in 1971 as an education and environmental center to help preserve eagles. Its current project is a captive breeding program aimed at reproduction of the species through artificial insemination.

Bald eagles have bred naturally in captivity but rarely through artificial insemination, Ingram said. Golden eagles have been bred artificially, but he said the problem is different with bald eagles.

“The bald eagle is a more solitary bird,” he said. “It doesn’t like to be handled. It’s much more difficult to work with.”

Bald eagles, with wingspans up to eight feet, are the nation’s second-largest birds of prey, after the California condor.

Unlike many other wildlife specialists, Ingram shrugs off suggestions that the bald eagle now appears to be making it on its own in the wild.

“If a species reproduces at a rate of 25%, its population can increase. If it’s 20%, the population will decrease,” he said. “A few percentage points are the difference between a population holding its own, increasing or falling.”

Nevertheless, the bald eagle is making a strong comeback since the 1960s, when such pesticides as DDT impaired the ability of birds to reproduce. Starting in 1972, most uses of DDT in the United States were banned.

In Alexandria, Va., Daniel James, wildlife biologist in the Office of Endangered Species of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the 1987 count of nesting eagles has not been completed but that last year there were an estimated 2,000 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the contiguous 48 states. From that it was concluded that there were 6,000 to 8,000 resident bald eagles.

In addition, he said, there were 8,000 breeding pairs in Alaska, with a total of 30,000 bald eagles in that state.

A National Audubon Society survey in the early 1960s concluded that there were only about 400 nesting pairs in the lower 48 states.

Every state but Hawaii now has bald eagles.

“We’re encouraged as to the future of the eagle,” James said. “We believe it is on the road to recovery, but there’s a lot to be done.”

10% Population Drop

There have been setbacks. In late January, volunteers counted 959 of the birds along a stretch of the Mississippi in the Eagle Valley area, a drop of 10% from last year’s 1,069.

“This may indicate that the communities of bald eagles along the northern reaches of the Mississippi River are not reproducing well during the summer,” a report from Eagle Valley said.

Nonetheless, Matthew Perry, information biologist at the U.S. wildlife service’s Patuxent research center at Laurel, Md., said that his facility plans to cut back on its bald eagle program next year because the bird is doing so well.

He cited the work done by centers like Ingram’s in improving habitat and public awareness and the breeding program of the Sutton research area in Oklahoma where eggs taken from the wild are “hand-reared.”

Many states use volunteers in efforts to improve its eagle population. In Arizona, for instance, participants in the Bald Eagle Nest Watch program work with the U.S. wildlife service, the Forest Service, the state Game and Fish Department and other state agencies to keep a protective eye on the state’s 21 known eagle breeding areas.

New York is one of several states where eaglets taken from nests in Alaska have been fed by out-of-sight humans until they are old enough to fly and then released.

Ingram said that puts additional stress on the wild population and is one reason he hopes artificial insemination is successful.

Mark Martell of the Raptore Research and Rehabilitation program of the University of Minnesota Veterinary College in St. Paul, said it has sent injured bald eagles to various research and breeding centers and “one of the primary places they go is Terry’s place.”

At Eagle Valley, a converted barn houses classrooms, dormitories, offices, exhibition areas and a laboratory.

Most of the 14 birds now at Eagle Valley were shot in the wild.

‘Run Into Power Lines’

“Most wing damage is from gunshot,” Ingram said. “Sometimes they run into power lines.”

Biologist Brett Mandernack, director of the captive breeding program and manager of the preserve, is one of three full-time staff members at the center. He said the injured birds would be physically unable to make it on their own.

Mandernack shows the chicken barn and its 200 to 300 chicks destined to become eagle food at about the age of six weeks. And there are the plastic bags filled with frozen white rats sent from a laboratory in Madison. They will be fed to the eagles, as will mice, fish and deer killed by cars along highways.

Ingram found one of the largest concentrations of eagles in the country living along the river in the 1960s. He and several others formed the Eagle Foundation and began buying farms and woodland in the early 1970s.

In addition to the tract here, the foundation and the National Wildlife Federation jointly own a 320-acre preserve called the Ferry Bluff Bald Eagle Sanctuary along the Wisconsin River.

Concerned Over Debts

Ingram said he is not comfortable with the center’s $1.5 million in debts, mostly owed to banks for land purchases. But he said that he is convinced that a wealthy Eagle Valley member soon will make a contribution “that will wipe out the bill.”

Meanwhile, the center, which Ingram said receives no government money, operates on annual contributions of $20,000 to $30,000 from each of about 20 corporate sponsors.

Eagle Valley also has about 1,200 members who pay $15 a year for individuals and $20 for families. About 20 people have signed up so far for a special $50-a-month membership.

The center sponsors bus tours along the Mississippi when eagle migration is at its peak in later winter.

Among the fund-raisers are the center’s Bald Eagle Marathon and shorter “fun runs” each April.

Benefit Banquet

This year there were the International Bald Eagle Days, a weekend event in May in nearby Dubuque, Iowa, which concluded with a Bald Eagle Benefit Banquet.

The preserve, about three miles long and a mile wide, encompasses Indian mounds and river valleys, in addition to the prairie land and upland meadows. Most of it is open to the public.

“Since we’ve been here, we’ve been able to document this as one of the greatest eagle migration areas in the nation,” Ingram said. “There will be 200 to 400 a day at the peak of migration. A flock of eagles may be 40 miles long--one at a time, one-half to a mile apart. You can see the complete line from the observation tower atop our barn.”

The fact that his disabled birds are grounded may be part of the problem in getting them to reproduce, Ingram said.

“Because of the crippling maybe they just can’t get turned on,” he said. “Maybe they have to go up and soar around.”