Bald Eagle Perches in North Cape May

NORTH CAPE MAY — The national symbol, a bald eagle, perched on a tree on Summer Circle April 13.
The following about bald eagles is from the state Department of Environmental Protection Web site:
NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife
Endangered and Nongame Species Program
Bald Eagle
(Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
THE BALD EAGLE IN NEW JERSEY
New Jersey was once home to more than 20 pairs of nesting bald eagles. As a result of the use of the pesticide DDT, the number of nesting pairs of bald eagles in the state declined to only one by 1970 and remained at one into the early 1980’s. Use of DDT was banned in the United States in 1972. That ban combined with restoration efforts by biologists within the NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife’s Endangered and Nongame Species Program (ENSP) acted to increase the number of New Jersey bald eagles to 119 active pairs in 2012.
The bald eagle is currently listed as endangered in New Jersey. Recently, the status of the bald eagle was changed from endangered to threatened on the federal endangered species list, and the species is being considered for removal from the federal list. ENSP recovery efforts – implemented in the early 1980’s – are now bearing fruit, as New Jersey’s eagle population rebounds from the edge of extinction. In 1982, after Bear Swamp – New Jersey’s only active bald eagle nest since 1970 – had failed to produce young for at least six consecutive years, ENSP biologists removed an egg for artificial incubation, and fostered the young back to the nest.
The necessity of this fostering technique was due to eggshell thinning as a result of DDT contamination.
The eggs, if left in the nest for the adult eagles to incubate, would crack under the birds’ weight. Fostering continued successfully until 1989, when the previous female of the pair died and a new female was able to hatch her own eggs.
Increasing the production from a single nest, however, was not enough to boost the state’s population in a reasonable amount of time.
Mortality rates are high in young eagles (as high as 80 percent), and they do not reproduce until four or five years of age. ENSP instituted a hacking project in 1983 that resulted in the release of 60 young eagles in NJ over an eight-year period. These eagles have contributed to the increase in nesting pairs since 1990.