Thanks to Scientists

My mother sent me an article from her local paper,The Oswego Valley News, about the return of bald eagles to Central New York. She actually saw an eagle in her yard last year. I had never seen a bald eagle in the wild until we moved to Washington state. Now we have two nesting pairs in our neighborhood. What’s responsible for the return of this species from the brink of extinction? Science – and government.

In the mid 20th century, pesticides such as DDT were commonly used to kill mosquitoes and other damaging insects. My partner Julian remembers the crop dusters that used to spray DDT in his childhood neighborhood on the edge of the Everglades north of Miami. While effective against mosquitoes, DDT resulted in devastating effects as one moved up the food chain. Eagles and other raptors were particularly susceptible to DDT’s damage. Female eagles were unable to lay or hatch eggs into viable chicks. The early DDT research was summarized in Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring.

The Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970 by President Nixon. DDT’s use was banned in the US in 1972 in response to scientific evidence of its damage to the environment. Although banning the pesticide was a step forward, that wasn’t sufficient to increase the eagle population. Scientists around the country, including at Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology, did the heavy lifting of acquiring eagle eggs from relatively uncontaminated populations, hand-rearing the chicks, and releasing them into the wild after they fledged. According to the Oswego Valley News article, many of Cornell’s eagles were released into the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge at the north end of Cayuga Lake. Successive generations of fledglings established their own nests along the waterways of Central New York, including the Oswego River that runs through the city where I was born.

The return of bald eagles to the skies over our country was a direct result of scientific research that affected government action and funding for further research and remediation. So thank scientists by speaking up for research that benefits us, our country, and our planet. In addition, fight for science as a priority in the Federal budget.