Bald eagles hatching on Catalina Island

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Bald eagles hatching on Catalina Island
To keep an eye on the Santa Catalina Island bald eagle nests, go to the Catalina Island Conservancy
website's eagle page at bit.ly/1gk3M0H. There are two views to choose from.
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This still image from the "eagle cam" shows a mother bald eagle in a nest. One of her eggs was hatching Monday.
COURTESY OF CATALINA ISLAND CONSERVANCY
BY AARON ORLOWSKI / STAFF WRITER
Published: March 24, 2014 Updated: March 25, 2014 12:32 p.m.
Bald eagle hatchings this season on Santa Catalina Island indicate the precarious
population once threatened by chemical discharges into coastal waters is stabilizing, a
leading eagle biologist said Monday.
Two eagles hatched more than a week ago, and on Monday, another was clawing out of
its egg as hundreds of people streamed the live webcast and watched from their
computer monitors.
It's a sharp turn from the days when the Channel Islands eagles had been completely
killed off.
The Southern California and Catalina Island populations of America's national bird were
decimated between the 19th century and the 1970s, first by hunting and then by chemical
discharges by the Montrose Chemical Corp., which released millions of pounds of the
pesticide DDT from its plant in Torrance into coastal waters via the sewer system.
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Even though DDT was banned in 1972, large amounts of it remain in the environment.
Both the waters off Palos Verdes where the DDT settled and the site of the Montrose plant
itself are federally designated as contaminated sites.
Now, decades after DDT production stopped, the bald eagle is recovering.
“The DDT issue is slowing resolving itself. There's always going to be some out there for
1.
the next 100 years, but it seems to be low enough that at least some of the eagles are able
to hatch and grow,” said Peter Sharpe, a research wildlife ecologist for the Institute for
Wildlife Studies. Sharpe oversees the bald eagle restoration program on Catalina.
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The eagles' struggles on the Channel Islands began with ranchers hunting them to
protect their livestock in the second half the 19th century.
In the 1960s, it came to light that Montrose was releasing DDT into the ocean and that
DDT was working its way up the food chain all the way up to the eagles, where it
weakened their eggshells, causing the shells to crack prematurely, killing the birds.
By end of the 1960s, there were no longer any bald eagles on Catalina Island. That's how it
remained for decades, even after DDT was banned.
In the 1980s, scientists started working to restore the eagles on the Channel Islands. From
1980 to 1986, scientists released 33 juvenile eagles from Northern California and the
Pacific Northwest on Catalina. In 1987, a pair of eagles mated – but the eggs broke in the
nest.
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A broken-down version of DDT – called DDE – was still thinning eggshells.
To restore the eagle population, scientists began removing eggs from eagle nests,
incubating them in the laboratory, then refostering the hatched birds into the nests so
they could grow up. It wasn't until 2006 that a bald eagle hatched naturally on the
Channel Islands, at Santa Cruz Island. By 2008, scientists had stopped removing eggs
from nests to incubate them artificially.
“We didn't expect it to take so long. We didn't realize how much DDT sediment was in the
ocean off Palos Verdes. It was only in the 1980s that we realized how much was out
there,” Sharpe said.
4.
Today, more than 60 eagles live on the Channel Islands. Catalina alone has eight pairs of
eagles, seven of which have active nests.
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Margo Stapleton
People have lived on our islands since the early 1850s, including my g-grandfather and his
brother who raised stock and farmed near the isthmus on Catalina until a drought killed off
most of their animals and their fruit trees. My grandmother may have been born there. I'm not
sure why you think humans should be taken off Catalina, since they live in only two very small
areas now. They are very protective of the wildlife there and never interfere with any of the
birds or animals.
Reply · Like ·
1 · March 26 at 5:13pm
Irene Dorsey · Works at I Dont Work, Im A Princess ;*
I know you love those eagles, Margo. I am in love with a much smaller bird chickadees - they come when I call them when I fill up the feeder, and they are just
adorable.
Reply · Like · March 26 at 5:24pm
Darlene C. Matthews ·
Top Commenter
nice to hear. not all of us recovered from dioxin toxicity so well.
Reply · Like · March 25 at 1:52pm
Michael Martinez ·
Top Commenter · Placentia, California
Calif needs to get humans off the island... Leave nature alone...
Reply · Like · March 25 at 10:26am
Darlene C. Matthews ·
Top Commenter
People make lots more babies than the planet can support, but to support multi
generations of elders and make new consumers for capitalism to grow. They gotta
live somewhere.
Reply · Like · March 25 at 1:55pm
Carole Wood ·
Top Commenter
Congratulations to K81 and K82 of Two Harbors on their newest eaglet hatching.
Reply · Like ·
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2 · March 25 at 8:52am
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