Bald Eagle
A Brief History of New York Bald Eagles
| Flash back to 1976. There is one pair of nesting bald eagles in the state, but no young birds. Each year the pair lays eggs and each year the eggs collapse during incubation. The egg shells are thinned by the DDT in their parents’ bodies. No live eagles hatch from their repeated attempts to raise a family. | |
| How do you bring a dying population of eagles back to the level of a healthy, reproducing population? | |
| Biologists at the NY Department of Environmental conservation (DEC) tried something new. They brought young, healthy bald eagles in from Alaska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan to DDT-free nesting sites in NY hoping they would stay and establish a new population. This program, releasing young, non-native eagles and hand rearing them to independence is called hacking. Many of these birds adopted NY where they successful nested, bred, and eventually populated the state. |
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| In
another successful program biologists placed dummy (plaster paris)
eggs into the nest of the mating pair of native eagles. After a few
weeks of the adults "incubating" the artificial eggs, they
placed captive-bred eagle chicks (eaglets) into the nest
where they were raised by their adoptive parents. Many birds were
raised successfully in this program. |
 Credit: R Foster |
| Since the bald eagle restoration programs ended in 1989, New York's eagle population has continued to grow, with 135 breeding pairs located in 2008. | |
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