A winter sky alive with bald eagles

Sunday, February 19, 2006

-- Rick Attig

Shivering in the predawn darkness on an icy February morning in Oregon's Klamath Basin, you wonder whether it is worth the long drive, the wake-up call at an ungodly hour and the teeth-rattling cold.

Then a dark shape soars overhead. And another. Soon so many bald eagles are in the sky above Bear Valley that you lose count. Finally, as the morning sun lights up the basin, the last of scores of bald eagles flies overhead, its head and tail feathers a brilliant white in the blue winter sky.

So was it worth it -- all of it? The costly, controversial ban on DDT and other pesticides that thinned the eggs and nearly crushed the bald eagle and other species? The tens of millions of public and private dollars spent on eagle recovery? The hardships imposed on property owners forced to give over their land, or at least its active use, to protect the nesting sites of protected bald eagles?

The answers perch at Bear Valley, where eagles roost at night, and fly out at dawn every morning to hunt the flats of the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge and private farms. The Klamath Basin is home to the largest concentration of wintering eagles in the lower 48 states, and it hosts an annual mid-February eagle conference.

This weekend's conference is a celebration. The bald eagle is back. Today there are more than 7,000 known nesting pairs of bald eagles in the lower 48, up from just 417 pairs 40 years ago. Last week the Interior Department issued draft guidelines that spell out how landowners and land managers should protect the bird once it is removed from the endangered species list.

The bald eagle may come off the list within the next year. Yes, some people are still opposed to the delisting of the eagle, worried that protections for the bird will be weakened. But it is time.

Meanwhile, the nation is embroiled in a larger debate about the Endangered Species Act. Republicans in the U.S. House have pushed through a bill that would dramatically weaken the act, under the guise of making it more efficient. The act, which became law more than 30 years ago, sorely needs updating. But its fundamentals, including protection of habitat critical to each endangered species, must not be changed.

It is always going to take time, money and persistence to save a species of wildlife. Yet in the dim light of a cold February morning in the Klamath Basin, the sky alive with bald eagles, there is no doubt.

It is worth it.

-- Rick Attig