Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act - Bald Eagle Recovery and Conservation

Bald Eagle Recovery and Conservation

Since the 1972 ban on DDT the eagle has been able to gain healthy population growth. The US fish and wildlife services were able to achieve this with the cleaning of waterways including lakes and rivers, protecting nesting sites, and reintroducing eagles back to their original environments.

The bald eagle was first proposed to be removed from the protection of the US Endangered Species Act by the US fish and wildlife services in the 1999 issue of the Federal Register. The final rule to remove or delist the bald eagle from the Endangered Species act was published on July 9, 2007 and was put into effect on August 8, 2007. When the bald eagle was removed the FWS had collected data on 9,789 breeding pairs.

In 1983, the Northern States Bald Eagle Recovery Plan was proposed. This plan, like the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center plan, had goals to reestablish self-sustaining populations of bald eagles throughout the Northern regions. Their initial goal was to have 1,200 occupied breeding areas, that is "the local area associated with one territorial pair of eagles and containing one or more nest structures" distributed over a minimum of 16 states within the region by year 2000. They aimed to achieve an annual productivity of 1.0 young per occupied nest. The plan had specific tasks that were characterized by following categories: 1. Determine current populations and habitat status, 2. determine minimum population and habitat needed to achieve the goal, 3. protect, and increase the bald eagle populations habitats, and 4. implement a coordination system for information and communication. To achieve these tasks, annual surveys, habitat assessment, site-specific management plan and establishing improved communication and coordination.They worked on improving the habitat conditions especially during winter to maximize the survival rate of these eagles