Hi, everyone. Welcome to our program. My name is Chelsea McKinney,
and today I'm gonna be your host as we explore different types
of technology that conservation professionals use
to observe wildlife.
Today, I am at home of the US Fish and Wildlife Service,
where our job is to protect wildlife, all sorts of wildlife, including plants, animals
and their habitats, to help protect endangered species.
Well, today, I'm standing in front of a beautiful
eagle's nest. Now these eagles have become a part of our services history
for the past 8 years. we have a tall sycamore tree
that the eagles chosen in order to be able to see far away.
This makes for the perfect location for these eagles
to catch fish right out of the Potomac River.
adults actually have a 7 to 8 foot wingspan.
and they weigh about 8 to 14 pounds.
The female is typically larger than the male.
and the distinctive white head and tail feathers appear when
mature around four to five years old. Now bald eagles are believed to live
about thirty years or longer in the wild. They mate for life,
building nest on top large trees near rivers
lakes in other types of wetlands. The adults will often return to this exact same
nest year after year, making additions to the nest every single year.
Now some nest can reach up to 10 feet across
and weight up to 2,000 pounds.
Now that's about the size of the average car, or even a hippopotamus.
Eagles feed primarily on fish, but they also feed on ducks, .
rodents and snakes. Both the male
and female build a nest, but the female actually chooses nest tree.
We're here with Jim Siegel, a US Fish and Wildlife Service bioligist
here at national conservation training center, and our eagle expert. Jim thanks
for being here with us today. You're welcome, Chelsea.
Can go ahead and talk to me about how many eggs typically an eagle's nest have?
Eagles typically lay one to three eggs. Usually 2.
Both parents incubate the eggs and they're gonna sit on the eggs for 35 days.
okay and then once those eggs hatch, can you talk to me about
about how long the young will stay in the nest and what that feeding process is like?
The babies are gonna be in the nest for 11 to 12 weeks.
Both parents are gonna to feed them and it's a very delicate
process in which they're literally breaking food into very small little pieces.
Around the fledging time, the babies really start to flop around
really flap around exercising their wings and
as soon as they leave the nest they're going to be staying in the area for six
weeks still being fed by their parents
and they learned to both fly and feed on their own. Jim,
why were the bald eagles an endangered species and why
how have they become such a conservation success story today?
Eagle population soared decline severely in nineteen forties
because the invention DDT a very strong pesticide
It caused the eagles eggs to thin and they weren't able
hatch their eggs. Starting in 1978
eagles were put on the endangered species list as the population declined
to about 450 pairs in the lower 48 states. The
pesticide DDT was banned because
which impacts on birds and other wildlife. By 1995 because the band and
DDT
eagle population had recovered significantly
there was about 95,000 birds around that time period
In 1997 Eagles were delisted to threatened
and by 2007 the population recovered so greatly
that they were able to remove the Eagle off the endangered species species list
all together.
Today that was about two hundred thousand birds in North America
with Alaska having about a quarter of them. Awesome, thank you, Jim so much for
being here with us today. You're welcome. It was fun.
Hi, Everyone. I've got Ryan Haggerty here, video producer at the National Conservation Training
Center
and Ryan and I are standing in front sycamore tree where the eagle nest sits over 100 feet high.
Ryan, you've got all this awesome equipment, how do you
go about installing a webcam in this your nest?
There's a lot of different ways but it all ends up with you getting
from the bottom to the top tree or wherever the nest
so the most simplest ways you take a rope
and awaited object in you thrown over the limbs and you pull your rope
and, of course, you have to have a nice heavy harness and be able to ascend into
the tree.
A very cool way to get into the tree
as well is to use a bow and arrow. And
especially out west. You can shoot this
over a tree limb, and pull your rope up. It's kinda like the Hunger Games, right? Right.
And so our arborist has decided the only safe way to get up there is
by crane and a big bucket truck. So we actually
drop an arborist into the nest from above.
It has to be clean. Every year someone has to get up there
and clean that camera, readjust it. That's very cool, Ryan. Thank you so much for
sharing this
this with us. We really appreciated it.
There are a variety of reasons we use cameras in wildlife study.
Some cameras are set up for law enforcement to catch poachers who take
wildlife illegally.
Others are for biological purposes, to see animal behaviors and feedings that we could never see otherwise.
Other biologists can use technology to track migration, like with a pod of dolphins.
Our eagle camara for instance is being used for educational
purposes.
We're gonna to give you a taste of all of this.
And we'll talk to a variety of different people working
in a variety of different careers, helping wildlife in some form
from all over the world. We look forward to being with you next episode
as we venture in and see endangered manatee up close and personal
at Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge in Florida.
Thank you all so much for being with us today.
We'll see you next episode.