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mike
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Joined: 30 Dec 2002
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 Posted: 6/17/2005, 9:29 pm Post subject: New bald eagle nest found on Rim |
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| azcentral.com wrote: |
New bald eagle nest found on Rim
Kate Nolan
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 17, 2005 04:24 PM
Shortly before Memorial Day this year, biologists discovered a pair of adult eagles nesting in a tall Ponderosa pine beside Lower Lake Mary in the Coconino Forest near Flagstaff.
It was a big deal for Arizona's bald eagle breeding program, which measures success a nest at a time.
This was the first bald eagle nest to be spotted north of the Mogollon Rim since the 1970s, said James Driscoll, the Arizona Game and Fish biologist who manages Arizona's bald eagles. The new nest raised the total number of bald eagle breeding areas in Arizona to 47, most of them in the central part of the state.
Arizona's first recorded sighting of a bald eagle was in 1890 at Stoneman Lake in the same area as the new nest, but use of the insecticide DDT nearly wiped out the Arizona and national bald eagle populations by the 1960s.
The first hint that eagles were breeding above the Rim again came almost a year ago. Bald eagles are no strangers to northern Arizona, but they usually only winter there and head north in March to breed.
That's why Henry Provencio took notice last July when he saw an eagle winging across Lower Lake Mary and disappearing into some pines.
Provencio, a U.S. Forest Service biologist, and two state biologists followed the bird into the forest and discovered a nest under construction.
"There was a pair of eagles playing house. They built a nest but weren't sitting on it," said Provencio. He let other biologists know about the find and kept an eye on the nest, which measures about three feet by five feet.
The pay-off came May 23 this year.
That's when Provencio hiked into the site for a periodic inspection.
"Sure enough, one of the adults was in a nearby tree and the other was in the nest and appeared to be incubating," he said.
The discovery left little time for marveling, as the Memorial Day weekend and the arrival of holiday tourists loomed.
Because the bald eagle is an endangered species, its breeding sites are often closed to the public for protection.
"We had already had some people off-roading right near the nest, so it was a big rush to get the closure area put in place," said Provencio.
The area remains closed to foot and car traffic, and watercraft can't be beached there.
Recently, the adult eagles have started carrying food to the nest, a sign that a baby or two have hatched.
"Once we see the young, that will be the big deal," said Provencio.
"It's good they are now populating the Mogollon Rim area. It brings Arizona eagles closer to other eagle populations and more genetic diversity," said Game and Fish's Driscoll.
New eagle nests are discovered with some regularity, the most recent one in the White Mountains in 2003, but the Lower Lake Mary nest differs because of its distance from other breeding areas.
Driscoll says it shows progress in the recovery of the Arizona eagles. Eagles return to breed within 200 kilometers of where they were hatched. The new nest suggests that the Arizona eagles and other populations to the north may be cookie-cuttering their way into proximity.
No one knows where the new adult eagle pair came from because they are not banded. Driscoll's program aggressively bands Arizona eaglets, but misses a quarter of them each year, he said.
Most likely the new pair are Arizona eagles that eluded banding, but there's an outside chance they are Utah eagles, said Driscoll.
The arrival of the new birds signals changes on various levels.
Driscoll foresees more Arizona breeding pairs in the area soon.
Provencio says the breeding site will influence plans for upcoming timber sales in the Coconino Forest. Two proposed cutting sites are nowhere near the nest, but the roadways out from the cutting area run close to it, creating possible disturbances to breeding birds when logging trucks drive by. Federal law requires the Forest Service to plan around the protected species.
Lower Lake Mary's high water levels have naturally closed off some human access, but the Forest Service plans to put up a gate to the area to make closures easier in the future.
Provencio continues to keep an eye on things.
"I was going to go out this evening to see if the nestling was poking its head out of the nest yet," he said one recent afternoon. |
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0617nest-ON.html
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