I lift my cup of tea, and make a toast, "Well done!." I love watching eagles, all types, but baldies especially. I'm glad they're doing so well.
On a side note, I have a wee bit of trouble with the way threatened and endangered species are counted. Since wildlife has a tendency to elude wildlife watchers, you can only get an estimate. Indeed, the government only lists its figures as estimates. But surely I'm not the only one who found the 1963 "estimate" of 417 pairs in the lower 48 states suspiciously low (especially since it seemed like there were quite a few folks with a huge stake in getting the public to think that the birds were doomed without drastic government action, including raids on property rights). And surely I'm not the only one who reads this in the Weiss article...
Today the number of breeding pairs is estimated at 7,066, with the birds thriving in 49 states including Alaska, the one state in which they were never listed as threatened. (Bald eagles are not indigenous to Hawaii.)
...and finds an "estimate" of 7,066 worth a shake of the head.
And does anybody really think that there is any way whatsoever to even guess with any hope of accuracy how many bald eagles there were in this part of the world "[w]hen the first Europeans arrived in North America"? Really? One hundred thousand breeding pairs, you say? I suppose the natives, all tribes everywhere, sent bird tally teams out, and put the numbers down in logbooks? Don't get me wrong, I feel people are free to guess all they want to. I just hate for policy to be built on their guesses, which are built on necessarily shaky foundations, that's all.
Well, no matter. At least enough authorized modern birdwatchers have found enough birds to reassure the folks who prefer to fear the worst, and, finally, maybe, just maybe, the eagles will be moved off the threatened list. There will still be safeguards in place, mind you. As Weiss reports, they're still covered under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, for instance, not to mention more general laws, and to appease environmental groups the feds are working on clearing up their defintions of what constitutes "disturbing" eagles.
As strictly anecdotal evidence, some winters we see more bald eagles than others, but the local trend has been upward. Around here it's not all that unusual to see more than twenty of them on one drive between here and the next town over. I don't know if our population gets included in that surprisingly precise estimate of 7,066 breeding pairs (for that matter, not all of ours appear to be paired off yet), but I'm sure we're doing our bit in preserving the species. I haven't wanted to mention that before this, for fear of bringing headaches and government inspectors down on the heads of people who have been quietly providing good habitat.
I hope I'm not jumping the gun too much mentioning it now. It would be just my luck that this rash of articles today (several news sites have articles on this) is an underhanded attempt to flush out folks like me. (Stage setting: melodrama. Characters: gleamy-eyed men in black capes and with handlebar mustaches which they twirl for dramatic effect. Heh -- the government bureaucrat says -- another spot that people have been harboring unknown birds! Hand me that book of regulations and let us be off!)
And, yes, I'm joking. Kind of.
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