Use the news: Bald eagle success nationally
Lesson for grades 5-8
Bald eagles have long played an important role in America, as symbol of the United States and, before that, as a sacred species for Native American peoples. Their numbers were plentiful in the early 1800s, but hunting, loss of habitat and use of the DDT pesticide caused their population to decline dangerously from 1870 to 1970.
There were only 417 breeding pairs in the nation’s lower 48 states in 1963, forcing the federal government to place bald eagles on the Endangered Species List and ban the use of DDT, which made the shells of eagle eggs too fragile to hatch.
Today, bald eagles have rebounded dramatically in a “historic conservation success story,” federal officials say. A new report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has found that the population of bald eagles has quadrupled since 2009, with more than 316,700 bald eagles, and more than 71,400 nesting pairs present in the lower 48 states during the 2019 breeding season, CNN News reports.
Bald eagles were removed from the Endangered Species List in 2007 but still are protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Wildlife protection efforts allowed bald eagles to escape the Endangered Species List.
Activity: In the newspaper or online, find and closely read stories about another species on the list. Use what you read to write a letter to the editor detailing why the species is endangered, what is being done about it and how long experts think it will take for it to recover.