River plays a critical role in eagle recovery

A huge bald eagle, stark white head reflecting the bright sun, flattens its sturdy wings as it soars over the mountains. He’s looking for his breakfast, with acute vision four to six times sharper than that of humans’. Below him, the terrain stretches out for miles, and he spies his prey in the crystal clear river.

Is this a scene from a nature documentary? A sight from some remote, mountainous terrain far, far from home?

No! It’s Main Street in Narrowsburg, NY, or the Delaware Valley High School football field in Milford, PA.

Lately just about anyone who keeps their eyes to the skies can be greeted by what once was an unlikely sight: a bald eagle, actually many bald eagles, who have made the Delaware River valley their year-round home.

They join a growing population of bald eagles who have decided that this region’s clean water, undisturbed habitat and ample supply of food, especially fish, is perfect for nest building and breeding. In fact, during a recent breeding season, more than 160 pairs of bald eagles who are now breeding in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, produced nearly 200 eaglets.

And as if this weren’t enough of a treat for us, more than 200 eagles migrate to the Delaware Valley region each winter from points north.

Peter Nye, head of the Endangered Species Unit of the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, says that the Delaware River plays a critical role in recovering and sustaining the eagle population. “No doubt the Upper Delaware watershed provides ideal habitat for both migrants and local birds to survive the winter,” he said. Nye spearheaded the state’s purchase of nearly 12,000 acres of land surrounding the Mongaup reservoir system, which drains into the Delaware River, to support this wintering population.

Nye’s agency has conducted annual surveys of the Upper Delaware each January since 1979 and has documented a continuous increase in numbers of eagles each year, a trend that still continues. “One of the most remarkable and critically important things,” Nye said, “that most people don’t realize, is the importance of the wintering habitat.

“There are few such suitable habitats in eastern North America, and the same eagles use them year after year.

“Loss of these over-wintering habitats would be catastrophic to a major portion of eastern North American breeding eagles,” Nye added.

Equally important is our growing breeding population—eagles that we now see here year round—which continues to bolster the species’ recovery.

Research gathered from an ambitious tracking program conducted by the NYS DEC shows that many eaglets from this region that reach maturity are breeding within 100 miles of the Delaware. One component of this tracking program involves Nye and his DEC team banding all the eaglets from New York’s nests.

Even though the eagles are experiencing unprecedented recovery, the future is far from guaranteed. The recent downlisting of the eagle from endangered to a threatened species has caused a “false sense of security,” said McKean. “Many people think that now we can let down our guard and be less vigilant about protection, but this isn’t true.”

In fact, with habitat loss the number one problem for eagle survival, and development pressure in this region at the greatest it’s been in perhaps 100 years, habitat protection is still a critical need. McKean and Nye agree that education about the importance of this habitat is the key to this protection.

Both Nye and McKean refer to the Delaware River as the “crown jewel” of bald eagle habitats in eastern North America. “Intelligent management and cooperative planning are key to ensuring that our grandchildren, and their grandchildren, will have the same opportunity to see and enjoy our national symbol as we do now,” they said.

[This article was originally published in the Eagle Institute’s fall 2004 newsletter.]