By David Fleet
dfleet@mihomepaper.com
Brandon Twp. — From a safe distance a handful of visitors to an area Oakland County Park could observe a pair of bald eagles nest and successfully produce fledglings.
“I’ll be keeping an eye on that nest and look forward to seeing two or three tiny heads poking over the rim of that structure in the spring,” said Jonathan Schechter, lifelong naturalist, outdoor writer/photographer and Lighthouse Keeper on South Manitou Island-Sleeping Bear Dunes.
“Eagles have adapted well to ‘life among us’ and are opportunist hunters and scavengers.”
The ties between Americans and bald eagles deeply etched in our history opened a new chapter on Christmas Eve.
On Dec. 24, President Joe Biden signed into law an amendment, sent by Congress to title 36 United States Code, to designate the bald eagle as the national bird.
According to a report from the second session of Congress, on June 20, 1782, the bald eagle was adopted as the Coat of Arms for the United States Great Seal. Now more than 240 years later the bald eagle image remains the leading insignia for all branches of the United States military, the leading image on thousands of Federal Government branches, departments, and agencies, including the President, Vice-President, Congress, and Senate.
“It’s a well deserved  long overdue designation,” said Schechter, a Brandon Township resident. “Bald Eagles are no longer a rare sight in Oakland County or anywhere else in our nation where their habitat needs are met.  Hardly a week goes by where I do not see a Bald Eagle in my travels; both within Oakland County and when exploring in the Thumb region of Michigan.”
“I  look at them as essential guardians of the environment; an “alarm system” for our environment and think back to the days before DDT ( a once widely used pesticide) was banned that so weakened their egg shells that  few eaglets hatched,” he said. “Where eagles do well, the environment tends to be  healthy.”
While the bald eagle is now established as the national bird, its story of survival was not without struggle.
Tina Shaw of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deemed the recovery of the bald eagle in Michigan a remarkable conservation success story.
“It shows that once we understand what’s causing the decline in a wildlife population, we can do something about it,” said Shaw, in response to The Citizen last week.
“While the federal and state laws that protect the species were, and continue to be, an important part of the species recovery, it took science-driven problem solving to identify issues and find solutions,” said Shaw.
“This amazing recovery was also made possible by the collaboration of many dedicated researchers and agency staff through collective work like the Michigan Bald Eagle Biomonitoring Project. Equally important, was the support of the many landowners and private citizens who have helped eagles by protecting nest trees, modifying project plans to avoid disturbing nesting eagles, moving roadkill away from roadsides and the like.”
In the 1960s and 70s the future of bald eagles was bleak.
According to the Michigan Audubon Society there were at one point fewer than 40 pairs of nesting eagles in Michigan and only 38% in the 1970s of Michigan’s fledglings. By 1980 there was complete reproductive failure of fledglings on the Lake Erie shoreline.
“No fledglings were reported in the lakeshore area,” said Erin Ford, conservation manager for Audubon Great Lakes.
“Zero.”
Back then, lack of young was due to the use of DDT pesticides and PCBs, those contaminates built up in the tissues of these predator birds, causing reproductive failure by thinning of the egg shells, said Ford in an interview with The Citizen.
“The eggs would break when they were trying to hatch them,” she said.
DDT in Michigan was banned in 1969 and then nationally in 1972.
Equally significant was the protection under the endangered species act, as well as the migratory bird treaty act and the golden eagle protection act. Fifty years later the conservation efforts are paying off.
In a 2019 statewide survey, over 1,600 nests and 900 breeding pairs were reported. In comparison in the 1980s there were only 83 breeding pairs and in 2000 that number had already risen to 359.
Nationwide, there are now more than 300,000 bald eagles in the wild, the all time low was in the 417 known nesting pairs in the early 1960s.
With the growth of the eagle population birds in Michigan are now expanding south in the lower peninsula where the high population are now residing, Ford said.
“We see them more often and they are adapting to more urban landscapes,” she said.
Ford’s evaluation of the bald eagle for the Michigan Audubon Society is supported locally.
“I take pleasure in knowing an active bald eagle nest can be seen across the lake from Independence Oaks County Park-North Unit,” added Schechter.
“You might even say eagles have become ‘urbanized’ and will readily feast upon road kill deer, discarded fish from anglers  and whatever else draws their attention.”