2006 a record year for bald eagles

The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR) has launched the 23rd year of the Mid-Winter Bald Eagle Survey. Beginning in January, state wildlife biologists are flying in a state airplane throughout Alabama, counting wintering bald eagles.

The survey follows a record year for Alabama's Bald Eagle Restoration Project. State wildlife biologists counted 77 bald eagle nests in Alabama in 2006 - a 21 percent increase over 2005 (61 nests) and the highest since the program began.

Since the early 1990s, a statewide aerial survey of bald eagle nests has also been conducted. However, following record nest numbers and the likelihood that the bald eagle will soon be removed entirely from the Endangered Species List, ADCNR biologists determined that every nest in the state need not be monitored. Instead during 2007, a selected sample of nests will be surveyed.

"The increase in the number of bald eagle nests is remarkable and demonstrates that our efforts to bring back bald eagles in Alabama are working. We should be able to detect any problem with our nesting population, should it occur, by monitoring an appropriate sample of nests," says ADCNR Wildlife Biologist Keith Hudson, who helps monitor the nests. "The progress that has been made has exceeded recovery goals."

The Alabama Bald Eagle Restoration Project is Making a Difference

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service says that at one time there were more than 1 million bald eagles in the United States. The population dwindled in the 1950s and 1960s primarily due to the devastating effects of the pesticide DDT, which was banned in 1972. In the early and middle part of the 1900s, Alabama lost its nesting population of bald eagles due to habitat loss and the impact of DDT. Prior to restoration efforts, the last known successful bald eagle nest in Alabama was in the 1950s.

In 1984, the ADCNR Nongame Wildlife Program initiated a project to restore nesting bald eagles to the state. Over a seven-year period (1985-1991), 91 juvenile bald eagles were released from six different locations throughout the state in an attempt to imprint Alabama nesting territories on these young eagles. In 1991, two successful eagle nests appeared in Henry and Wilcox counties, and, since then, eagle nest numbers have continued to increase each year.

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