Posted on 11/02/2005 7:11:18 AM PST by GreenFreeper
LAWSUIT: A state group seeks to have the birds of prey taken off the endangered-species list.
By JENNIFER BOWLES and ADAM C. HARTMANN / The Press-Enterprise
A California group on Tuesday filed a lawsuit seeking to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the bald eagle from the federal endangered-species list, six years after President Clinton announced a proposal to do just that.
The lawsuit comes after the recent deaths of two bald-eagle chicks near Lake Hemet east of Idyllwild, part of a small population of bald eagles that make the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains their winter or year-round homes.
The chicks were found dead in early September after their nest fell from a tree, possibly due to a storm, said Heidi Sellers, a U.S. Forest Service wildlife biological technician.
"It's always disappointing to find something like that, but it part of the natural process, it happens," said Marc Stamer, a U.S. Forest Service biologist who runs the annual bald-eagle counts by volunteers at Inland lakes every winter.
Biologists estimate the chicks were about 85 days old and about two weeks from leaving the nest. Sellers said they were too young to survive on the ground, and they might have been injured in the fall. In addition, she said, their wings were still in sheaths, meaning they weren't ready to fly anywhere.
The chicks were born in the same area as a set of eaglets from 2003, which some biologists said might represent the first documented breeding of bald eagles in Southern California in almost 50 years.
Inland Eagles Decline
While eagles are rebounding in some states, they appear to be on the decline in the Inland mountain ranges, Stamer said. In all, there are about two dozen or so eagles that return every winter, he said. However, Stamer said, four eagles -- two at Lake Hemet and two at Big Bear Lake -- stay year-round, which is a good sign that there is enough foraging available to them.
The eagles perch on trees by the mountain lakes to prey on fish, and generally nest in nearby canyons.
Sellers said she and other forest biologists hope that satellite technology in the form of small "backpacks" attached to the eagles could track the birds' whereabouts and help them understand how the eagles use their habitats.
Eagle Lawsuit
The lawsuit seeking to remove eagles from the protection of the U.S. Endangered Species Act was filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf a Minnesota landowner who cannot build on his 7.4 acres because it contains an active eagle nest and wetlands that cannot be filled in.
Damien Schiff, an attorney for the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation, said the government should stop dragging its feet and make a decision. The bald eagles are still considered a species threatened with extinction despite former President Clinton's remarks that they have recovered, Schiff said.
Chris Tollefson, a spokesman for the agency in Washington, D.C., said he hadn't seen the lawsuit and could not comment on it. But he said the agency has been delayed in removing the eagle off the list as officials figure out how protections for the birds will continue under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
"I know it's rather unusual for this amount of time to have lapsed," Tollefson said, "The hold up has really been about how the species would be managed if it were to be taken off the list."
Species Protections
Schiff said that protections for the bird under the Endangered Species Act prohibit his client from building within a 330-foot radius of the eagle's nest. Under the two bird acts that would protect the eagles once off the endangered list, only the bird and its nest would be protected and not the surrounding habitat.
At the time of Clinton's announcement in 1999, two days before July 4th, the government estimated that 5,748 nesting pairs lived across the country.
When America adopted the bird as its national symbols in 1782, the service said, as many as 100,000 nesting eagles lived in the lower 48 states. By 1963 only 417 were found, a result of the birds eating fish contaminated by pesticides used along coast and wetlands to control mosquitoes.
Reach Jennifer Bowles at 951-368-9548 or jbowles@pe.com
Klamath Basin has the largest population of wintering bald eagles in the lower 48 states. 400 - 600 pairs migrate here annually. Even though the Bald Eagle is listed, the Wildlife Refuges are last in line bewteen threatened sucker and coho fish to receive water to support the waterfowl diet of the raptors. http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/Photos/LarryTurnerGallery/larryturnergallery.htm
Bald eagle tastes remarkably similar to trumpeter swan.
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