Babbitt Favors Allowing Tribe to Take Eaglets

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt favors a policy change that would allow members of the Hopi tribe to capture golden eaglets from a national monument in Northern Arizona, a move that critics fear could open the door to hunting in national parks.

The issue at the Wupatki National Monument near Flagstaff, Ariz., has been building since summer, when the Hopi requested permission to take eaglets for use in a religious ceremony.

Taking or hunting of animals in national parks is strictly prohibited, but Babbitt said in an interview that he favors allowing an exception in this case. The months-long debate within the Interior Department was described by one official as “a flash fire.”

“We’ve had long internal discussions about this,” Babbitt said. “My general view is that we should respect traditional religious uses on public lands by Native Americans to the extent that they do not jeopardize or threaten the extinction of a species. We need to examine these issues on a case-by-case, site-specific basis.”

The controversy pits freedom of religion against the long-standing mandate of the Parks Service to protect wildlife. The Hopi already catch the eaglets on land managed by the Forest Service but have never been allowed to do so on the more protected Park Service land. Conservation groups monitoring the issue are appalled by the potential precedent.

“It has the potential to unravel the parks system as a collection of animal sanctuaries. This strikes at the integrity of the parks system,” said Frank Buono, a retired longtime Parks Service administrator who wrote a legal analysis of the issue for the National Parks and Conservation Assn. “Not even [former Interior Secretary] James Watt attempted to do this.”

Sam Henderson, park superintendent at Wupatki, said that since the issue came up he and other park managers have been inundated with requests from hunters to hunt the herds of elk, deer and moose that roam at many national parks.

The Internet, Henderson said, is crackling with speculation about the future for hunting in parks. A decade ago the National Rifle Assn. sued unsuccessfully to open parks to hunting; fishing has long been allowed.

“I don’t know how you stop it once it starts,” Henderson said. “We have sensitivity to the Hopi culture, we understand why they want to do this, but the national park is not the appropriate place to gather the eagles.”

The Hopi have been gathering eaglets in the area for centuries and the land within the 35,000-acre monument is recognized as the tribe’s ancestral home. They also gather eaglets on Navajo and Forest Service land next to their reservation.

Golden eagles are not endangered but are protected under a 1962 amendment to the Bald Eagle Protection Act, which makes it illegal to collect eagle feathers or parts. However, the Hopis are permitted to gather the eaglets under two acts of Congress.

In June, Henderson rejected the Hopi request to use permits issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that allowed the taking of up to 40 eagles and red-tailed hawks elsewhere on federal land.

The Hopi appealed the decision, which was upheld by the Park Service regional director and in Washington by the acting director. A further appeal directly to Babbitt yielded a letter in September from Don Barry, assistant Interior secretary for parks and wildlife, that rescinded the earlier decision and informed the tribe that the matter was under advisement.

The season for taking eaglets has passed, and in October the Hopi withdrew their request, but they are expected to raise the issue again next year. A Hopi spokesman could not be reached for comment, but the tribe said in the past that they would go to court if need be to assert their right to practice their religion. For 20 years, a number of tribes around the country has asserted hunting rights in national parks but have lost every legal battle, Buono noted.

Barry is waiting for a legal opinion to formally conclude the matter.

“The Park Service has been taking baby steps in this direction for some time,” Barry said. “We’ve been instructed by Congress to remove impediments to Native American religious freedom. We must show respect and deference to the tribe’s leaders in a government-to-government relationship.”

Congress has allowed one exception regarding hunting in national parks, providing for subsistence hunting at two parks in Alaska. Barry does not agree that the policy regarding the Hopi stands to enlarge that exception.

“It’s a bogus, bogus argument to say that all of a sudden it’s going to be the NRA next,” he said. “I’m not going to be stampeded by that. I think it’s really an intellectually flabby conclusion to reach.”

But Ron Tipton, vice president of the National Parks and Conservation Assn. in Washington, said the precedent is clear. “We think this is fraught with problems. We have found no basis upon which you can make this decision and just limit its scope to Wupatki. You can’t mess around with a national monument without it having an impact on the national parks.”

Native Americans commonly receive exemptions regarding access and gathering of resources on federal land. In August the Hopi signed an agreement with the nearby Kaibab National Forest that gave the tribe the right to collect ceremonial and medicinal plants and allowed them access to burial sites.

The golden eagle is venerated in Hopi custom, and the taking of the eagles is itself a sacred practice. In May, a scouting party searches for nests high in the red rock canyons and mesas. The scouts may leave gifts for the birds. When they return, they remove the eaglet and carefully raise the young bird, treating it with reverence and often giving it toys. The growing fledgling is kept outdoors tethered at the leg.

In July, the Home Dance is celebrated to signify the harvest and the return of kachinas, Hopi gods, to their home on the San Francisco Mountains north of Flagstaff. The eagle is smothered with cornmeal and buried in a special cemetery. Small feathers are used in prayer ceremonies and longer feathers are placed on kachina dolls.

James C. Bednarz of the University of Arkansas, an expert on birds of prey, said the golden eagle population in Northern Arizona is stable but not growing. In fact, a recent census found only one on the monument land.

“From a population standpoint, removing a small number of eaglets would not have an adverse effect on the population. From a humane standpoint, I’d prefer to see a modification of the ceremony,” he said, adding: “I’m not a Native American, so I can’t fully understand this.”