I was sitting in my son's living room in Bozeman, Montana two days ago and an adult bald eagle flew overhead, two blocks from downtown Bozeman. Ten days ago, there were eight bald eagles flying overhead and perched in the Cottonwoods nearby, offering exceptional looks at a place called Ennis Lake. In Northern Virginia I saw a bald eagle perched on a tulip tree in Potomac Overlook Regional Park near Washington D.C last year.

Forty years ago you would have been hard pressed to see such a site, even in places like Bozeman, Montana. Now eagles are nesting across the United States, even in large urban areas where they had not been seen in years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have de-listed the bald eagle from the Endangered Species Act.

In an article published in the New York Times on 11/25/08, the bald eagle is identified as a bird that might become endangered again as toxins are more common in the eagle's food source. This is significant because the bald eagle is a symbol of our country.

The article identifies Mercury as the source of trouble, but there are many other toxins of concern in the eagle's habitat. In the early 1970's there were only one nesting pair of bald eagles in the state of New York, there are now 145 nesting pair's of eagles in New York state, according to the New York Times. That's a lot of eagles for one of the nation's most populous states.

In the early 1970s DDT was a problem for eagles as well as the endangered Peregrine Falcon, and now the successful nesting of bald eagles may in fact be slow because of Mercury contamination in places like the Catskill region of New York.

According to the article, eagles may be barometers for overall environmental health, an issue that is heavily monitored by groups like NRDC. Eagles, like all predatory species of animal, act like "canaries in a mine shaft" and in the Catskill region of New York, there are several reservoirs that provide the drinking water for several million US residents in New York City. I was not aware of that.

The Biodiversity Research Institute in Maine is studying how methyl mercury is ending up in a food chain on top of which perch Bald Eagles and human beings. The bald eagle eats fish that are contaminated with methyl Mercury. Humans drink the water that is partial habitat for the eagles and humans eat fish from the same waters.

Mercury levels in other eagle populations are rising throughout the US, according to the New York Times. There is now more scrutiny in this kind of toxin contamination and in the near future it will become a major problem for Bald Eagles and humans if nothing is done. Groups like NRDC are trying to abait toxins in the eagles environment and our environment and need to be supported in this essential work.

 Protection under the Endangered Species Act really helped the bald eagle become a success story. That protection lapsed when the eagle was delisted two years ago. Toxins have always been a problem for all raptorial birds, but now more so than ever the toxins are a real problem that has increased over many boundaries.

Eagles, which not long ago we thought were doing well, are now dying at an alarming rate from toxins they get in their food supply; like ducks with lead in them and fish and road kill with Mercury. It's hard being at the top of the food chain like the Bald Eagle when you regularly eat foods with high doses of toxins in them.

Last year I saw another type of once-beleaguered bird near Washington D.C., again in northern Virginia on a lake near Alexandria, a bird that was brought back from the brink, like the bald eagle, which also was scarce and in danger of extinction, the Peregrine Falcon.

The Peregrine species suffered, like the eagle of today, from toxins.  In the case of the peregrine, it was DDT, now banned in the US. The falcons' eggs were getting too thin for the bird to reproduce successfully--so many environmental groups went to work to bring the birds back from the brink of extinction.

Now you can see Peregrines commonly as they migrate along coastlines dive bombing shore birds from eastern North America. You can even watch them in cities like Boise, Idaho, as they harass the local pigeon population.

We have to make sure the eagle does not fly so close to the edge, the way its cousin the Peregrine Falcon did.

[Photo from flickr user island_explorer]