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To the Editor:
The Fish & Wildlife Service just put out a news release saying that the Bald Eagle population has quadrupled in the last 12 years. This is a bold faced lie and they know it! Any mathematician will tell you that for this to happen to any population two things have to happen. One: No member of the population can die during that 12 years, and two: its yearly reproduction must be more than 10% of the total population each and every year.
We know very well that the first is not happening as our news media is constantly filled with bald eagles being shot, hitting power lines, being poisoned or have experienced a trauma of some sort in state after state. We know for a fact that the second is not occurring either. If it were, we would be seeing three times as many immature eagles as adults. Our Annual Midwinter Bald Eagle Count recorded only 20.4 % immatures compared to adults, not the 300 % as their news release would have you believe. There is no way that the 7,000 nests which they estimate are in the lower 48 states, could produce the 36,000 immature eagles that are needed, if the population were to quadruple. Even if 100% successful, these nests could only produce about 14,000 young which is less than half of what it would need to be.
Why the snow job?? What are they covering up? What else are they lying about? What don't they want Americans to know about our bald eagle population? Are they trying to cover up the fact that they are violating their own responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act? The Act states that they are supposed to be monitoring the bald eagle population every 5 years, which they have not done. Someone sitting behind a desk estimating how many eagles are out there, is not monitoring. The stupid estimates in this news release have no connection to reality.
Next year is supposed to be the third time for such monitoring to be done since the bald eagle was delisted in 2007. What counts have been done by them? What facts from these counts do they have, to prove they have even conducted these counts? The only monitoring that has been done has been done by someone sitting behind a desk estimating how many bald eagles nests are out there, how many young those nests have produced, and what the bald eagle population is in the wild. And their estimates are way out in the wild blue as this news report shows. In the 1960's we got our best facts about the bald eagles from the US Forest Service.
There are not many persons left in the F&W Service who were around during the 1960's when we first became alarmed about the bald eagle population declining. I was on the front lines at the time and I remember how the F&W Service claimed that DDT was not affecting the bald eagle reproduction. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to finally admit it was affecting this population. I remember how they tried to discredit Rachael Carson when she wrote her book "Silent Spring", but she had her facts. Now that I have written "Silent Fall" they think I am just a nut, who doesn't know what I am talking about. In it I only quote my own observations, but they show that something is not healthy with the bald eagle population.
Bald eagles are being affected by the West Nile Virus, the Wisconsin River Eagle Syndrome Virus, vehicle collisions, high wire collisions, lead poisoning, and other chemical poisonings, plus loss of habitat to present day developments. If the truth be told, the bald eagle should be placed back on the Endangered Species List and we should stop developments that destroy bald eagle habitat and stop the chemical companies that are producing the poisons that are killing our bald eagle, other birds, insects, trees and flowers. We need someone in the political arena to step to the plate like Senator Gaylord Nelson did in the 1960's and 70's to take action to correct this problem, before we lose our National Symbol flying free.
Terrence N. Ingram,
Pres. and Exec. Director Eagle Nature Foundation
Apple River, IL