The bald eagle’s recovery is also an American success story

MORGAN CITY, La. (InvestigateTV) — A bald eagle sits atop a Louisiana cypress tree in Lake Palourde near Morgan City, a scene that would have been inconceivable a few short decades ago.

“We can see up to 60 eagles in a tour,” said Billy Gaston, who makes a living largely off providing eagle sightseeing tours in and near the lake.

Gaston’s “A Cajun Man’s Swamp Tour” draws tourists, nature lovers and a devoted following of photographers, including Greg Robichaux.

“I look forward to every one of them I can come to,” Robichaux said.

Robichaux remembers a rare eagle sighting years ago.

“Got to see one flying over our heads and everyone stopped what they were doing just to go see one. That’s how rare they were,” Robichaux said.

Once on the doorstep of extinction, the eagle population has roared back.

“I remember as a kid seeing an eagle was a special thing and it still is, but you can regularly see eagles now,” said Seth Blitch, Director of Conservation for the Nature Conservancy in Louisiana.

In the 1960s, roughly 400 pairs were known to nest in the lower 48 states. Louisiana’s picture was even gloomier. State biologists estimated there were as few as five breeding pairs.

Scientists laid the blame primarily on the pesticide Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), which was widely used in agriculture and mosquito control programs.

The birds ingested the chemical through their diets.

“It had the impact of making their eggs, the shell in their eggs couldn’t get hard and so, when they were sitting, they would break their eggs. Not on purpose, of course. But that’s one of the impacts of DDT,” Blitch said.

The government ultimately banned DDT.

“That’s a really simple example of what can be done to help restore species,” Blitch said.

The birds were protected under the Endangered Species Act, and the population recovered dramatically.

“Eagles are like pelicans in many ways because there was a concentrated effort to help bring those populations back, it was successful,” Blitch said.

The government removed the eagle from the Endangered Species List in 2007, widely regarded as one of conservation’s great success stories.

Blitch said risks to eagles remain.

“I don’t think anything’s home free because of how fast habitats are still being converted. Eagles need large trees. They need large food supply. They’re really larger birds when they have a brood of chicks, they’re really hungry chicks. They need a lot of food,” Blitch said.

In Louisiana, the challenges include the simple loss of real estate.

The birds rely on healthy fisheries, and south Louisiana’s coastal land loss threatens to deprive them of more habitat.

“That includes coastal forests, not just salt marsh. But everything that’s in that zone and there’s still a lot of big trees, as you lose that, there’s just less space for eagles to be,” Blitch said.

An annual population explosion

Unlike many bird species that migrate through Louisiana, eagles nest and raise their young here in the winter and spring. The eaglets typically hatch by January or February.

By 10 weeks old, they are no longer at risk from predators, and biologists consider the nest a success. By 12 weeks, the young eagles take their first flights.

The eagle has proven to be resilient and adaptable, even setting up nests high above the ground in urban areas and suburban neighborhoods.

In 2020, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the population topped 300,000, roughly four times higher than 10 years earlier.

“Every time I see one, it just never gets old. I just love watching the bald eagles, all the other birds,” Gaston said.

State surveys indicate there are now several hundred eagle nests in Louisiana.

Some of the eagles have already departed Louisiana to make their annual trip north for the summer. They will start returning around September or October.