ON THE WINGS OF RECOVERY

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week officially removed the country’s symbol, the bald eagle, from the nation’s endangered species list. The de-listing of the eagle, while slow, is a good example of an endangered species success. It also highlights why efforts to weaken the Endangered Species Act are misplaced.

Bald eagles were once so numerous that farmers routinely killed them to feed to their livestock and some locales offered a bounty for dead birds. By the early 1970s, the numbers had shrunk to just over 400 nesting pairs outside Alaska and fewer than two dozen in Maine.

The near extinction of the birds spurred Congress to pass the act in 1973. Although the birds were protected under federal law as early as 1940, it was not until the pesticide DDT, which caused eagle eggs to have thin shells which were crushed when adults sat on them during incubation, was banned and eagle habitat protected, that the population began to grow.

Now there are more than 10,000 breeding pairs in the lower 48 states.

To rebuild the Maine population, wildlife officials transplanted eggs and relocated eaglets from Minnesota and Wisconsin. There are now more than 400 breeding pairs in Maine.

The birds will remain protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Maine’s endangered species act.

Recent proposals in Congress have sought to eliminate habitat protections and required inter-agency consultations for endangered species. The eagle experience shows that simply outlawing the killing of an endangered animal is not enough to rebuild its population; the animals need a place to live and breed. It also shows that requirements such as the Environmental Protection Agency consulting with wildlife agencies before approving a pesticide for use remain necessary.

There have also long been arguments that the Endangered Species Act hinders development. This has not been the case in Maine or nationally. The federal government cannot use the act to tell private landowners what they can do on their property, unless they are undertaking a project that requires a federal permit or uses federal money.

Since 1990, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reviewed more than 1,100 projects in Maine. In only eight cases, a “formal consultation” was warranted in which federal agencies got together to discuss ways to avoid harming a species. In each of these cases, the service found that work could be done without harming the species in question, usually bald eagles, and the projects were allowed to proceed.

The Endangered Species Act works slowly and is often bogged down by lawsuits. Weakening its protections won’t solve these problems or protect endangered plants and animals.