Stephen Colbert loves this: bald eagles were removed today from the U.S. Endangered Species List. What Stephen won't like is that the delisting serves as a testament to government regulations and the hard work of environmentalists (such as Rachel Carson and her denouncement of the egg-ruining pesticide DDT in Silent Spring; see booklists).
The bald eagle was declared an endangered species in 1967 when there were a measly 417 nesting pairs. After the government banned DDT and zoos began sponsoring captive breeding programs, eagle populations began to rebound. Today there are more than 10,000 nesting pairs across the nation, one-fifth of which are in the states of Florida and Minnesota. Granted, 10,000 pairs of eagles is a long way from the 417 nesting pairs only 40 years ago. However, in a news release in 1999, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said, "When America adopted the bird as its national symbol in 1782, as many as 100,000 nesting bald eagles lived in the continental United States, excluding Alaska."
Our baseline should be 100,000 eagles, but because no one remembers what it was like in 1782 and because eagle populations were on the brink of extinction, we are now happy to achieve a comeback of 20,000 birds. The bad baseline (417 nesting pairs) has indeed gotten better, but also the baseline has indeed shifted.
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1782 is not a good baseline eaither, or rather isn't any better than the 10000 pair one. In 1782 the "forest primeval" existed because the large population that had used and influenced the forests had been decimated by disease - the Indian population. Because of that, the forests and such went wild. The book 1491 is a good eye opener to the fact that the wilds we think of in North America were not equilibrium states.
Are there any indications of bald eagle numbers around that time (1491)? Regardless, your point is a good one: what (and when) is an adequate baseline? Perhaps something to address in a future blog post...