Eagle May Fly From Nest of Endangered

By JAMES GERSTENZANG

May 6, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON —

The bald eagle, lauded by Thomas Jefferson as “a free spirit, high-soaring and courageous,” was three decades ago a sickly symbol of American freedom, its habitat disappearing and its reproductive ability shattered by chemicals in its food chain.

It is under assault no more.

Heralding its revival, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt will take the first step today toward removing the eagle from the protection of the Endangered Species Act, the government’s primary defense of the country’s most at-risk species.

The move--along with similar declarations of recovery of the peregrine falcon, the gray wolf and 24 other less-charismatic species--symbolizes victory in a three-decade campaign to bring the regal bird back from the threat of extinction. With the exception of a plant in Utah known as the Rydberg milk-vetch, they are the first species being removed from the endangered species list because they climbed back to healthy numbers.

“The eagle is doing splendidly. It’s making a wonderful comeback everywhere,” Babbitt said in an interview with The Times on Tuesday.

The Interior secretary plans to visit a wildlife refuge in Gill, Mass., along the Vermont border to draw attention not only to the eagle’s recovery but also to the Endangered Species Act, which is facing threats perhaps greater than those bald eagles now encounter.

If Babbitt has his way, the eagle--first a symbol of freedom, more recently a symbol of the ravages of environmental degradation--will fly as a symbol yet again, this time as a poster bird for environmental legislation.

“The eagle is a splendid patient to work with because it evokes a special response in the American people,” he said. “It connects the landscape with patriotism.”

For at least 4,000 years, since the era of the Babylonians, the eagle has symbolized courage and strength--despite the contention of ornithologists and zoologists that it is something of a poor citizen, picking up dead fish as well as the living, and stealing others’ prey.

No less an avian expert than John Jay Audubon said of the eagles: “They exhibit a great degree of cowardice.” On the other hand, he added, they aren’t bad eating, the flesh “resembling veal in taste and tenderness.”

Benjamin Franklin denigrated the eagle as “a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor and very lousy.”

Nevermind.

Now the eagle’s image is ubiquitous. It travels the world on the cover of the American passport, folds neatly into wallets on the dollar bill and is emblazoned on football helmets in Philadelphia. And, increasingly, it is soaring over the forests and marshes of the republic for which it stands.

The Interior Department’s emphasis today on the role of the Endangered Species Act notwithstanding, scientists give the greatest credit for the revival of the eagle to the banning of the pesticide DDT in 1972 and to laws prohibiting the hunting of bald eagles.

Until the early 1940s, eagles were widely viewed as vermin, with “bounties placed on them by state game commissions,” said Keith Bildstein, director of research and education at the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, the nation’s oldest sanctuary for birds of prey, in eastern Pennsylvania.

But in 1942, with the eagle population dwindling, Congress passed the Bald Eagle Protection Act, making it illegal to kill the national bird or sell its feathers--trophies that were given almost mystical importance in indigenous cultures for centuries. In 1967, eagles were placed on a predecessor to the Endangered Species Act.

Then in 1972, the use of DDT was banned in the United States. The chemical was found to have made eagle eggs so weak that the nesting bird would crack the shell before the embryo could develop.

The ban, scientists say, proved crucial. Now, eagles can be found in every state except Hawaii, and they nest along the Potomac River within sight of the Capitol dome.

Thirty-five years ago there were 417 breeding pairs of mate-for-life eagles, or a total of 834 adults, and numerous juveniles in the lower 48 states, according to David Buehler, an associate professor of wildlife science at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and author of the eagles chapter in the forthcoming update of the authoritative Birds of North America.

Now, he said, there are an estimated 5,000 breeding pairs of bald eagles, and their population is increasing annually at a remarkable rate of 8.6%.

The action being announced by Babbitt sets in motion a legal procedure, and appeals could yet reverse the de-listing decision. But environmentalists are generally supportive, having tracked the bird’s recovery in recent years.

The removal of the bald eagle from the list of threatened species--it had been on the endangered list, connoting a status of near extinction until four years ago--does not mean it can once again become a trophy for hunters. The protection of the 1942 law remains in effect.

“It is well-protected by law,” said Nancy Marzulla, president of the Defenders of Property Rights, an organization that vociferously opposes the Endangered Species Act.

She questioned whether the habitat protection provided by the legislation was ever needed to help restore the eagle population.

“Wouldn’t it have been great if instead of spending all the resources on the Endangered Species Act, they’d put it under lab conditions where it could be easy to propagate the bald eagle?” she said.

When the Endangered Species Act went into effect 25 years ago, the nation was in the throes of the birth of the modern environmental movement. But over the last decade, the legislation has come under sharp attack, particularly from property owners who have discovered their land was home to--or even just prime likely habitat for--at-risk species, among them fish, birds, mammals and strange plants with such curious names as the Missouri bladder-pod, a now-thriving plant living in limestone glades, and the Hoover’s woolly-star, a recovering California herb in the phlox family.

Babbitt has made a key element in his Interior Department stewardship an effort to reach a compromise between those who are trying to gut the legislation and environmentalists arguing for even stricter regulation.

The legislation has been renewed on a year-to-year basis since 1992, when it expired. At the heart of efforts to reauthorize the legislation is a proposal, endorsed by Babbitt, that would give property owners greater flexibility in using species habitat, if they also provide specific areas in which the species would be protected.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

On Their Way Off the List

Species proposed to be removed or downgraded from the Endangered Species list:

ANIMALS

Bald eagle (48 conterminous states)

American peregrine falcon (North America)

Aleutian Canada goose (Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Canada)

Columbia white-tailed deer (Washington, Oregon)

Tinian monarch bird (Northern Marianas Islands)

Guam broadbill (Guam)

Mariana mallard (Northern Marianas Islands)

Hawaiian hawk (Hawaii)