A Better Home for Bald Eagles

If eagles were pigeons, Santa Catalina Island wouldn’t be in such an uproar. Given that bald eagles are majestic and fraught with patriotic symbolism (though not so gorgeous when they’re picking at a dead seal), it isn’t surprising that islanders are in anguish over the proposed cancellation of a federal breeding program on Catalina.

But because of DDT contamination in waters off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the program isn’t working, serving to lock up restoration dollars that could make a bigger difference elsewhere. And from a larger environmental perspective, Catalina is a blip in the bird’s comeback.

Bald eagles were nearly wiped out nationwide by the early 1960s because DDT residue caused them to lay eggs made unhatchable by dehydration. The problem was particularly severe in Los Angeles County after a chemical company poured tons of the then-legal insecticide through sewer systems. Later, a legal settlement with the company put tens of millions of dollars toward countering some of the local damage.

The carrion-eating bald eagle has, happily, rebounded as DDT slipped out of the land-based food chain. The bird is thriving in several states and was re-categorized in 1995 from endangered to threatened.

Not so the Catalina eagles, even though one of the original aims of the settlement was to revive their population. They are still eating too much DDT from fish, dead seals and other ocean creatures that concentrate the persistent chemical as it moves up the food chain. Their numbers are sustained only because biologists collect the eggs from the eagles’ nests, hatch the few viable ones and then return nestlings to their wild parents.

The federal agencies working on restoration, for seabirds and sport fish as well as eagles, are thinking intelligently about ways to do the most good, and that doesn’t include the Catalina program. In fact, Catalina may be able to raise private money to continue its own breeding program. But that would be a lengthy task because scientists haven’t yet decided on practical ways to remove or contain the DDT.

The public restoration money could instead speed breeding of bald eagles in the unpopulated northern Channel Islands, off Santa Barbara. The National Park Service is planting zoo-bred eagles on those islands, but they are too young for officials to know yet whether they will breed.

The bald eagles on the northern islands could help crowd out nonnative golden eagles. The goldens, unlike the balds, prey on the endangered little island fox.

There are no painless decisions here. Still, if each piece fits successfully and bald eagles flourish on the northern islands, the wide-ranging birds could visit and even live on Catalina again. That’s a lot of ifs, but they’re better than an environmental dead end.