Baby Eagles, At-Risk Youths Help Each Other to Soar

Urlick Evans gazed at the caged eagle 60 feet up in an old cottonwood and the bird glared down at him, two proud creatures struggling to adapt to their environment.

“He’s wild,” the 21-year-old former son of the streets said. “I was pretty much wild then too.”

The eagle, named Hoptowit, is one of four bald eaglets being raised in temporary captivity on the banks of the Anacostia River in hopes of repopulating the nation’s capital with the national symbol. Evans is one of 12 young men and women from Washington’s poorest neighborhoods working to make that dream--and a few of their own--come true.

The two were brought together by the Earth Conservation Corps, a nonprofit group that was the brainchild of documentary filmmaker Robert Nixon. The corps tries to help youths from Washington’s public housing projects, along with American Indians from five Northwestern tribes, escape the double-barreled threat of poverty and crime by helping threatened species and habitats survive the scourge of man.

“It is a tough old world out there if you’re a young eagle,” said Paul Nickerson, an endangered species specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Humans pose the greatest threat to bald eagles through loss of habitat. But the North American bald eagle has made a spectacular comeback in the 25 years since the pesticide DDT was banned. From a 1960s low of 417 nesting pairs in the lower 48 states, the number has soared to well over 5,000 nesting pairs today.

The rebound is so encouraging that bald eagles were downgraded from an endangered to a threatened species in 1995, and eventually may be removed from the list.

“They’re doing great,” Nickerson said. “As the human population increases, the eagles are getting more tolerant and will nest in trees that are not as buffered from humankind as they used to prefer.”

But bald eagles are not yet nesting in the nation’s capital, and that’s what the group hopes to change.

Each summer since 1995, the group has relocated four eaglets from Wisconsin, where bald eagles are plentiful, to the 444-acre U.S. National Arboretum and the towering cottonwoods along the Anacostia. This year’s birds will be freed this month.

It’s too soon to tell if the experiment is working; bald eagles don’t start breeding until they are 4 or 5 years old. But the habitat is conducive--about 10 pairs are nesting outside the city--and eagles typically return to nest where they were raised.

The young guardians are engaged in a struggle of their own. Two corps members were suspended temporarily for stealing, and the eaglets are named for four former corps members who were killed by guns or drugs.

Corps members gather early every morning to feed and monitor the birds. To avoid human imprinting, they use a pulley system of buckets and rope for feeding.

Three members hide behind a bank of trees and load a tin bucket with donated day-old fish that is sprinkled with vitamin powder. Then, using the pulley, they raise the bucket to a point above the cage and jerk the rope until the food tumbles down to the birds.

The concern and attention paid the eaglets does not go unnoticed by corps members.

“They eat more than we eat,” said 20-year-old Lamont Johnson.

“And they care about them more than they do us,” 19-year-old Mack Calloway said.

The young conservationists, who also clean up the Anacostia’s tributaries, complain they are paid below minimum wage for 40 hours a week of hot, dirty work. But their $4.53 an hour, as national service volunteers, is considered a stipend from AmeriCorps, which funds part of the group’s work.

The real lure is the $4,700 they receive for college or trade school tuition after 1,700 hours of community service.

And there are other benefits not measured in dollars.

“It’s a cool program,” said Calloway, who admits to past run-ins with the law. “It teaches you discipline and some responsibility. . . . It’s structured. When you’re ready to give up the drugs, you want to get yourself established.”

Evans, who was arrested on drug charges, dropped out of school and couldn’t find a job until he signed up with the corps. In late June, he took the high school equivalency exam, a necessary step to qualify for the tuition money.

“From here,” Evans said with a look at Hoptowit, “I’m going straight up, straight up the ladder.”