Rerise of Ohio bald eagles
NEW BREMEN — Ohio has been home to a bald eagle resurgence the last several years and Auglaize County Wildlife Officer Mark Schemmel said the future continues to look bright.
Schemmel spoke to members of the New Bremen New Knoxville Rotary club on Tuesday morning, outlining the history of bald eagles in the state.
Schemmel, a 2009 Anna graduate, has been with the Auglaize County Division of Wildlife since 2013.
As of 2020, the total confirmed number of bald eagle’s nests in Ohio sat at 707, up from 347 total nests in 2014.
Research showed that Auglaize County had a total of four nests in 2020 and Schemmel figures that number to be higher now.
The increase of the bald eagle population in Ohio has been a welcome one as decimation of the bird’s natural habitat led to them being put on the endangered species list in 1967.
“I think everybody has a vested interest in the bald eagle. I find you don’t have to be a big outdoorsman to love the bald eagle,” Schemmel told Rotarians. “It’s our national symbol, kind of symbolizes freedom here in America.”
Schemmel said that one of the biggest determining factors of the loss of bald eagles was the destruction of wetland habitats, where bald eagles mostly live.
“Habitat loss was a crucial loss to some of the bald eagles,” he said, pointing to wetlands on the shores of Lake Erie being removed in favor of homes or other subdivisions.
The widespread use of the pesticide DDT in the agriculture industry also played a major role.
While the DDT was not lethal to adult birds, it led to a slew of other issues.
“Over time, eggs that were laid — the shells were extremely weak,” said Schemmel. “When that female or even male would sit on them to incubate, the sheer body weight would just crush the eggs essentially. If the egg was fortunate to hatch, we saw a lot of issues with the actual eaglet.”
DDT was banned from usage in the United States in 1972, a major stepping stone in rehabilitating the bald eagle population.
In 1979, the Ohio Division of Wildlife started the Ohio Eagle Management Plan, a research project which determined there were four nesting paris in Ohio.
“A lot of research went into this where our biologists would go out, they marked the four nesting pairs we have in Ohio, they banded those birds,” said Schemmel. “They wanted to get a good grasp or starting point on what these eagles needed to thrive. Looking back, that’s just an astonishing number for where we are today.”
Bald eagles were removed from Ohio’s endangered species list in 2012.
A map was produced in the mid-2000s that showed the nesting map of bald eagles in the state.
Fast forward to 2014, there were 200 known nesting pairs.
“Out of those 200 nests, 347 young were produced,” said Schemmel. “Sixty-two counties had active nests.”
With help from citizen scientists, a map was completed in 2020 that showed updated numbers.
“If you knew where there was an active bald eagle nest, you could make an online submission. That data was compiled,” said Schemmel. “Our biologists and pilot would go out and confirm that it is a nest. A lot of times the county wildlife officer would walk that property and confirm the same.”
The 2020 numbers showed that there were 707 total nests in the state. While the number of bald eagles living in Ohio is uncertain, Schemmel figured that there were at least two bald eagles per nest and hopefully one to three eaglets being hatched each year.
“I’m always getting calls in Mercer County where somebody finds a new nest site,” he said. “I know that all 88 counties now have an active nest.”
The life expectancy of bald eagles is typically around 20 years, but Schemmel told a story of an injured female bald eagle that was found last summer in Marion County that was determined to be 28 years old.
“She was banded up on the shores of Lake Erie. They did the math and figured out she was 28 years old,” he said.
Schemmel said that Division of Wildlife Assistant Chief Todd Haines was actually on the team that banded the bird on Lake Erie.
“It kind of really went full circle for him,” said Schemmel. “As his career progressed — he’s now near retirement — he got to re-release it and I know that was a special moment for him.”
As for the future, Schemmel said it continues to look bright, noting that he thinks the bald eagle’s population is going to eventually plateau.
“We’re going to reach a caring capacity to where we can’t, I guess, handle any more bald eagles given our resources,” he said. They’re of course territorial. You’re not going to see them clump together in any one given area. I don’t think we’re going to get them as common as a crow in Alaska and parts West. I think eventually it’s going to reach a caring capacity where we have a healthy population but they don’t become too overpopulated.”