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Bald eagle chick Santa Cruz Island ProjectThe Nature Conservancy owns 76 percent of Santa Cruz Island, and the National Park Service owns the rest. The bald eagle reintroduction program is an important component of the Conservancy’s comprehensive effort to save the endangered island fox and other rare species from extinction. Found nowhere else in the world, the tiny island fox ruled Santa Cruz Island as its top predator for thousands of years. But the introduction of nonnative livestock in the mid 1800s and the disappearance of bald eagles in the mid 1900s set the stage for a fateful chain of events. Lured by the abundance of feral piglets, golden eagles came to Santa Cruz Island and began to prey upon the island fox as well. Without territorial bald eagles to drive them away (bald eagles eat fish and carrion, not foxes), golden eagles colonized the island in the 1990s. Within a decade, the island fox population fell to fewer than 100. The Nature Conservancy and its partners are currently breeding island foxes in captivity, capturing and relocating golden eagles to the mainland, eliminating feral pigs and reintroducing bald eagles to Santa Cruz Island. "In the past few months, we've begun to turn the corner," says the Conservancy's Santa Cruz Island project director, Dr. Lotus Vermeer. "Our well-planned efforts over the past 30 years are paying off." Learn more about Santa Cruz Island |
Santa Cruz Island
Photo © Harold E. Malde
The Eagle Has Landed
Life has come full circle for America’s symbol of freedom in the northern Channel Islands off the coast of southern California. On April 12, the first bald eagle chick born on the islands in more than half a century carefully pecked away its shell and became an instant star.
Biologists watching the birth via remote video broke into applause and cheers. "I feel like a grandfather!" said David Garcelon, president of the Institute for Wildlife Studies. "I’ve been waiting 30 years for this day."
The historic hatching on Santa Cruz Island marked a milestone in The Nature Conservancy’s multi-partner program to restore the biological richness of the island for future generations.
Restoring a Keystone Species
Bald eagles disappeared from the Channel Islands in the mid 1900s, causalities of the now banned pesticide DDT, which chemical companies dumped into the ocean through the Los Angeles sewer system.
Scientists have tried for more than 20 years to re-establish the birds on Santa Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles. But the lingering effects of DDT have made the birds’ eggshells too thin to hatch without human intervention.
In 2002, the National Park Service launched an effort to re-establish bald eagles on Santa Cruz Island, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, off the coast of Santa Barbara. Each year, 12 eight-week-old chicks are transferred from the San Francisco Zoo or their birthplace in Alaska and introduced to their new island home. Scientists expect the first batch of Santa Cruz Island bald eagles to begin nesting as early as this year.
The April 12 hatching occurred during the program’s fifth and final year. The chick’s parents were born in captivity and raised on Catalina, but they flew to Santa Cruz Island as a pair and established their first nest this winter.
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