THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 30, 1994 TAG: 9406300577
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF & WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: 940630 LENGTH: WASHINGTON
Citing a successful three-decade campaign to rebuild eagle populations across the United States, the Interior Department today will move to reclassify the national emblem, transferring it from the endangered species list to the less urgent category of ``threatened'' in all but three of the lower 48 states.
{REST} To mark the occasion, Mollie Beattie, director of the department's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will release an eagle called Hope over the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Environmentalists applauded the upgrading of the eagle as a symbol of the success of the 1973 Endangered Species Act. Under the statute, federal officials designate animals and plants that are on the brink of extinction, give them protective status and take steps to increase their numbers.
In Virginia, the eagle population was almost wiped out in the 1960s. But about 151 pairs of bald eagles were spotted in the state last year, including 30 pairs on the James River, more than 40 pairs on the Rappahanock and Potomac rivers and 15 pairs on the Eastern Shore.
The main reasons for the decline in the U.S. eagle population, experts say, were aggressive, illegal hunting and the widespread use of pesticides in areas where eagles nest.
When eagles were declared endangered, hunting them became illegal. And in 1973, the Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of DDT in the United States. Among other effects, DDT caused many wild birds to produce eggs with extremely thin shells.
Environmentalists stressed that the reclassification of the eagle does not mean that efforts to save it should be decreased.
``The bald eagle population in the Chesapeake Bay is still very fragile,'' said James Frazer, a wildlife science professor at Virginia Tech University. He feels that the upgrading of the bird's status may be premature.
Dr. Mitchell Byrd of the College of William and Mary's Center for Conservation Biology said eagles in Virginia will continue to flourish ``in the short term.'' But the long-range prognosis ``isn't that great,'' he said, unless there is better land planning, particularly along the state's shorelines.
Eagles will not be taken off the endangered list in western Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. In those areas, arid weather makes eagle breeding difficult, environmentalists said.
{KEYWORDS} ENDANGERED SPECIES EAGLE
by CNB