APPLE RIVER — The Eagle Nature Foundation (ENF) has released the results of its 61st annual midwinter bald eagle count.
“The results of this year’s count are very disturbing. It confirms that the downward trend of the ratio of immature to adult bald eagles in the Midwest continuing,” Terrence Ingram, count compiler for the past 40 years said. “This year over 100 new volunteers participated in conducting this count. Altogether they found 1,850 birds, of which only 301 were immatures. That is compared with the 3,907 birds counted in the 2013 count. This annual count reveals that the bald eagle population peaked during 2007 and 2008 and has been on a steady decline ever since. The percentage of immatures is now about where it was in 1963.”
In order to get the number of birds that the volunteers did find, many people were counting bald eagles in areas away from the Mississippi River, including the St. Croix, Wisconsin, Rock, and Illinois Rivers as well as inland away from any major river.
“If only the areas, which had been counted in the early 1960’s, were considered, they actually contained fewer bald eagles than had been counted at that time. It indicates that something is happening to our bald eagle population and we need to look into it immediately, before it is too late,” Ingram said.
The Mississippi River had a population of 1,280 bald eagles, which is 624 more birds than last year. The Wisconsin River had 25 birds which is one more, and the Rock River had 202 birds, which is 109 more birds than last year. Thanks to more than 65 more counters, the St. Croix River had 189 birds, which is 139 more birds than last year and the Illinois River had 132 more birds, which is 37 more than last year. Some dams, which have had populations of 600 to 800 birds in past years, only had 20-80 birds this year. Did they lose their food source on the Mississippi River and move, or have they died? The Lock & Dam No. 5 reported 250 adult eagles with no immatures.
People have been making many excuses for the low number of eagles being present in their areas. Down south the people say that the bald eagles never came south, because of the open water up north, while up north there is the least amount of open water that there has been for years. Up north they say that the birds must have gone south this year. But neither statement is based on facts. The fact is that the birds are not present down south or up north.
Since the late 1980’s this count has documented the collapse of one after another of the bald eagle wintering communities along the Mississippi River. Each community gradually lost its immatures, then that community’s numbers gradually declined, until there were just a few adults left, and gradually those disappeared also, until there were no birds left. For years other communities seemed to reproducing well enough to offset these declines, so it was not apparent to a casual observer when he or she looked at the total numbers, but it could be seen by anyone looking at the numbers over many years.
The percentages of immatures on the Wisconsin and Illinois Rivers give a person cause for worry. The Wisconsin River had a decrease in the percentage of young from 52.2% last year to 36.0% this year. The Illinois River had a decrease from 31.8% last year to 14.1% this year. This immature ratio is some past years has been as high as 55-60%. All of these rivers had a percentage above 50% during the 1980’s, when reproduction was at its peak.
During the past they have seen kills of bald eagles in Utah and Idaho, which were attributed to West Nile Virus, bald eagle kills in the Midwest which were attributed to lead poisoning, and bald eagles in Georgia dying from a new bacterium. Ingram feels that there is something else affecting the bald eagle population, such as Glyphosate, the main chemical in Roundup, which is working its way through the food chain up to the bald eagles, just like DDT was doing when this annual count was first started in 1961 by the late Elton Fawks.
“It seems as if Glyphosate is something that our government does not want to look for, or find. It is found in all GMO foods and moves through the food chain just like DDT was doing in the 1960’s. I know it creates CCD in our honeybees and I believe it is the main cause of the decline in our Monarch Butterflies and is affecting our bald eagles as well,” Ingram said. This belief was the driving force behind his writing his book, “Silent Fall.”
