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Bald Eagle
Haliaeetus leucocephalus
Bald Eagle
Science
Pacific WildLife Foundation Projects
Return of the Eagle
The return of the bald eagle to former abundance along the north Pacific
began in the 1980s. Today eagles are widespread and abundant.
We think that eagles are abundant because of an abundance of
spawning salmon available from late summer to winter. If this
hunch is true, then the fate of eagles is tied to how well we
conserve salmon stocks. The objective of the Return of the
Eagle project is to follow eagles on their annual
migrations to and from salmon streams. Studies of eagles at
Washington salmon rivers have shown that they travel as far
away as the interior of Alaska and the Northwest Territories
to breed and that eagles stay as long as there are salmon to
eat. We want to know how good and poor salmon runs affect
eagle movements and their prey. This new project will begin in
the Strait of Georgia
on the west coast of Canada by Dr.
Rob Butler and Iain Jones of PWLF when sufficient funding
is obtained. Individual or corporate donations are welcome.
Please contact us through this web site. For more information
on eagles,
click here.
Bald eagles prey upon
great blue herons at
nesting colonies in British Columbia and Washington (Butler
1997). They occasionally kill adults but more often take eggs
and chicks from nests. The disturbance created by the eagles
in heron colonies has become so widespread that most herons
abandon colonies to begin again elsewhere. The Pacific WildLife Foundation and Simon Fraser University are conducting
research into how herons choose where to nest in British
Columbia where eagles are very numerous. Associate Iain Jones
under the direction of Drs. Rob Butler and Ron Ydenberg is
experimentally testing how large an area eagles will defend
against other eagles. Jones’ believes that herons might choose
to nest near an eagle’s nest if its territorial tendency
repulses other eagles that might otherwise attack heron’s
nests.
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