U.S. Eagle Repository Has Long Waiting List

It’s a question of supply not keeping up with demand.

About 4,000 American Indians are on a waiting list for eagle carcasses and feathers for religious ceremonies. But the National Eagle Repository set up to supply the parts does not take in nearly that many birds.

The wait now runs 24 to 30 months, said Bernadette Hilbourn, supervisor of the repository at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal outside Denver.

“Ninety-five percent of our orders are for whole birds, which is another reason it takes so long to fill the orders,” she said. “We do not get 4,000 birds in a year.”

Hilbourn could not estimate how many the repository averages.

“We get birds sporadically,” she said. “Some weeks we get two shipments, sometimes three, sometimes we don’t get any. It varies throughout the year.”

The repository fills the oldest requests first and works forward.

The process--particularly the questions asked on the application for eagles--became a central issue in a federal court case in New Mexico that began two years ago when a San Ildefonso Pueblo man shot a bald eagle for a religious ceremony.

A judge dismissed the case in January. And although he ruled that Indians still must apply for an eagle permit, he said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could not ask them what ceremony they need a bird for, nor require that a religious elder certify the application.

The application also asks such questions as whether the person needs a bald eagle or a golden eagle and whether the request is for a whole bird, certain parts or just feathers.

The form goes to the nearest Fish and Wildlife regional office, which forwards it to the repository. The applicant goes on the waiting list, ranked by the date the regional office got the completed form.

On the other end of the process, the repository takes in dead eagles from Fish and Wildlife field stations, bird refuges and state wildlife agencies.

Some died of natural causes; most were killed in collisions with power lines; a few are illegally shot, Hilbourn said. Carcasses of birds that were evidence in criminal investigations go to the repository once the case is closed.

Indians have long complained about the delay between applying and getting a bird, the cumbersome paperwork, the condition of the carcasses and how much of a bird an applicant might receive.

“We might ask for a certain thing--a wing, a tail, the entire eagle--but that other person who received the application decides what we receive,” said Wallace Coffey, chairman of the Comanche Tribe in Lawton, Okla. “We cannot go to that repository and pick what we want.

“We’ll take and use whatever we receive because we believe the power exists. But once an application is filed, it’s out of our hands,” he said.

But Isleta Pueblo Lt. Gov. Emil Jojola said it had not been that much of a problem for members of his New Mexico pueblo to get needed feathers.

“We don’t need a whole bunch,” he said. “We use the same ones year after year. Sometimes a feather will be lost, or the new younger generation coming up will need some eagle feathers. . . . If we ask [the repository] two years before, that would give us enough time to work something out.”

Hilbourn said the repository sometimes does not get in a whole bird because predators might have gotten to the carcass first, or the bird might have been partially burned in a power line collision.

“Sometimes they come in without wings, sometimes a tail is missing, sometimes the head,” she said.

But the feathers often are in pretty good shape even on a scavenged bird--unless it is molting season, she said.

“We do not get perfect birds. . . . [We] try to replace bad feathers with loose feathers to give them a good usable set,” she said.

Hilbourn said the repository ships birds within days of receiving them, sending the carcasses frozen, packed in dry ice.

Indians testifying in the New Mexico case complained that the long wait was a problem in ceremonies that are scheduled relatively suddenly.

Hilbourn said the repository can fill the few emergency requests, but such requests first have to be approved by the regional office, which then forwards the request to the Denver office.