EAGLE FACTS:

Number called remarkable given birds near extinction:

Bald eagles continued to rebound in the Chesapeake Bay region in 1999, according to figures released this week, with the numbers of birds, nests and newborns increasing again in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.  While the majestic raptor and national symbol faced neat extinction ust 25 years ago, its population in the Bay Region last year reached 513 nesting paris, which produced 706 eaglets, both records in recent history, experts said.

"It is truly remarkable witness the resurgence of the bald eagle in the Chesapeake Bay,"  said Craig Koppie, an endanger species biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which compiled the figures. But Koppie and other scientists are quick to note that all is not well. In Virginia, especially, researchers and state officials are urging the federal government not to remove the bird from the endangered species list in the Bay region until ample shoreline habitat is preserved for its lasting recovery.

The Clinton administration has said it wants to pull the eagle from the national list, without any local exceptions, in a star spangled ceremony on July 4th, 2000.

 Despite pleas from top Virginia biologists, environmentalists and the head of the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, the administration seems to be moving ahead with its plans. Officials said however, that federal regulators are studying alternative legal moves to help prevent waterfront lands for the eagles.

Virginia hosts almost half of the Bays populations, found mostly on the lower James River between Hopewell and Fort Eustis in Newport News. The area, however, is developing fast, which poses troubles for the shy, skittish birds that seem to breed better when humans are not around.

Last year, officials confirmed 230 active nests statewide, just one more that 1998, said Jeff Trollinger, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.  Trollinger assayed that given water front development trends, it appears the eagles, "have probably built out or have just about built out" their available habitat near the Chesapeake Bat.

So now, he aid, eagles are moving west, following rivers inland to places such as Charlottesville, Mecklenburg and Halifax.  "What we are really seeing is that the Bay Drainage area is not where our expansion is,"  Trollinger said. "Its in the Piedmont and out into the Blue Ridge,"

There was evidence last year that the eagles were expanding into unusual places in Hampton Roads, at a Portsmouth construction site, for example, and near Lake Drummond in the Great Dismal Swamp, where no bald eagles had nested in 30 years.

But judging from preliminary surveys this month, scientist with the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary report that many of these nest were INACTIVE this year.  The birds did not return to the Portsmouth site of Lake Drummond and have not been seen at a nests near Stumpy Lake in Virginia Beach, said Bryan D. Watts, director of the conservation center.  Watts said, however, that surveys how a new nest at Grand view Beach in  Hampton, and that eaglets are hatching at a nest on the lower north Landing River in Virginia Beach.  "Were already seeing a slowdown" in the new nesting sites. Watts said. "The optimal areas just seem to be saturated. So the birds are going elsewhere.  The bald eagle was declared an endangered species in 1978, mostly because the pesticides DDT made it almost impossible for the birds to reproduce; the chemical caused their egg shells to become perilously thin..

With DDT banned and with habitat protected under the Endangered Special ct. The Bay population climbed from 90 pairs in 1972 to 513 nesting pairs was classified a "threatened" species and , last summer the CLINTON administration would completely remove the eagle in July 200 from the LIST..

HELP ME STOP THIS  I LIVE HERE and thinks  its terrible..  We can't do it alone..

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