Eagle successes lead to more projects for Sutton Center
Tulsa World john.klein@tulsaworld.com
BARTLESVILLE — It has been 34 years since the George Miksch Sutton Avian Research Center was founded on a mission of avian research and a specific goal to bring back the bald eagle population to the southern United States.
In 2007 the bald eagle was removed from the endangered list, thanks in large part to the work of the Sutton Center.
The eagle project received international acclaim.
The estimated number of nesting pairs of bald eagles in Oklahoma went from zero to 150.
Eagles, hatched and raised at the Sutton Center, were released across five southern states.
The eagle population in the south has not only stabilized but continues to grow throughout the region.
“That doesn’t mean our work is done,” said Lena Larsson, executive director of the Sutton Center. “We have a lot of ongoing projects. There is still a lot of work to be done.”
Steve Sherrod, executive director emeritus, believes the eagle population recovery project, which was applauded by scientists around the world, was a great start.
“But there are many worthy projects that need work,” said Sherrod. “One of our areas is education. You should see the look on the faces of people when they feel the wind of an eagle fly right over their head.”
The Sutton Center isn’t resting on its accomplishments. Obviously, the eagle repopulation project has been a huge success.
Eagles remain a priority with population surveys and several popular “eagle-cams.”
However, the Sutton Center is in the midst of 11 projects including an expansive prairie chicken research and repopulation project.
Just like with the eagles in the 1970s and early 1980s, the prairie chicken population has been suffering drastic declines.
Attwater’s prairie chicken, one of the most endangered birds in North America, is the purpose of a major project.
“This is a very difficult project because it is very difficult to raise prairie chickens,” said John Toepfer, who is leading the prairie chicken research at the Sutton Prairie Chicken Ranch.
“The prairie chickens are susceptible to infections and you can have problems getting them to eat early on.”
The Sutton Center Prairie Chicken Ranch is under construction a few miles to the east of the Sutton Center headquarters located just south of Bartlesville. It has several barns, a research facility and a netted open-field habitat.
Sutton researchers are currently collecting greater prairie chicken eggs from Nebraska and bringing them to the prairie chicken facility near Bartlesville.
They are doing research on the breeding and hatching of greater prairie chickens at the ranch in preparation for more research on the endangered Attwater’s prairie chickens.
The natural habitat for Attwater’s prairie chickens is coastal Texas.
“But before we start researching and working on the Attwater’s prairie chicken research we need to study the greater prairie chicken,” said Larsson. “We want to have much of the research done before working with the Attwater’s prairie chicken because the Attwater’s numbers are so dangerously low.”
Some of the lessons learned in the eagle project over several decades have transferred to the current projects.
“We were originally driving the eagle eggs from Florida to Oklahoma and we just lost so many eggs during the travel,” said Sherrod. “That’s when we started flying the eggs. Still, there were concerns because the change in cabin pressure. We had a lot of issues to overcome to safely transport the eggs.
“We learned from that. As a result, we knew the best way to transport the greater prairie chicken eggs to Oklahoma (lowaltitude flights).”
While Attwater’s prairie chickens are the most serious population issue, the Sutton Center is researching the greater and lesser prairie chicken to help prepare for Attwater’s research and to support recovery of numbers for greater and lesser prairie chicken populations.
“These are very labor intensive project for us,” said Larsson.
Research has shown that one for the major causes of death of the prairie chicken are fences. So, Sutton Center researchers have developed ideas such as marking fences or removal of fences where possible.
There’s also a project to research the white-tailed ptarmigan, an alpine bird that exists on mountains above 12,000 feet.
There is a project to repopulate the masked bobwhite and prairie bird monitoring in Oklahoma.
Sutton Center wants to educate hunters about the lead-poisoning death of eagles which can be addressed by nontoxic ammunition.
And, current education cuts have impacted the Sutton Center because it lost an 18-year relationship with the University of Oklahoma. As a result, new funding is being sought to continue the highly successful “It’s all About Birds,” a program that brought avian education to over 100,000 Oklahoma schoolchildren.
In addition, a winter bird atlas for Oklahoma will be published in the near future to go with the previously published Oklahoma breeding bird atlas (2004 by the University of Oklahoma Press) also researched and written by the Sutton staff.
“We are very busy and involved in a lot of projects,” said Larsson. “The eagle recovery project was a huge project and an unbelievable legacy for us.
“There is no shortage of research and work. We’re very excited about the number of projects we’re currently working on and the ideas for the future.”