The Bald Eagle No Longer Endangered

Most experts expected the bald eagle to become extinct during the 20th century, but this American symbol has since reversed its decline and begun to recover. Experts realized in 1940 that the species had become endangered, and a law was passed to offer it protection from hunters- the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Once the threat from hunting was gone, the species found its numbers declining further by the ingestion of DDT. The bald eagle's numbers were down to only 417 pairs in the U.S. in 1963, and the species was put on the endangered species list in 1973.

The bald eagle has defied the predictions of extinction, raising their numbers dramatically over the past few decades. The more than 9,000 breeding pairs that exist today have made experts drop the species from the list of endangered species. The birds will not be abandoned by wildlife experts, however. For another five years, or more, the bald eagle will continue to be tracked and watched for any decline. The monitoring assures that if the number of bald eagles falls again that there will be a quick response to place the birds back on the list of endangered species.

Even without being reclassified as endangered, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act is still there to keep the animal from being hunted. In addition, the eagles also benefit from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act enacted in 1918. A few other countries, as well as the U.S., were obligated to protect the bald eagle and other migratory birds from being hunted thanks to the act. The act keeps the migrating birds safe from hunters as they cross into Canada or Mexico, and keeps the trade in their eggs, feathers and even their nests, illegal in all those countries.

Bald eagles have been further protected by the 1972 federal ban on DDT. DDT caused a serious decline in bald eagle numbers, becoming a major contributor to the species near extinction. This pesticide spread from fields to waterways and then to eagles. Bald eagles ate fish caught from the contaminated waters. The chemical then affected the eagles by keeping them from producing the hard shells needed to protect the baby eagles until it was time to hatch. The havoc wreaked by DDT made it difficult for the species to reproduce as mother eagles cracked their own thin eggs in an attempt to incubate them. Now that DDT is largely eradicated from the environment, there is nothing to prevent bald eagles from continuing to thrive.

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