Las Vegas –
A winter survey found a record 87 bald eagles at lakes Mead and Mohave, eight more than the previous record set in 2002, officials said.
“It’s been a good year,” Dawn Fletcher, research assistant for the Public Lands Institute at the University of Nevada, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal for a Monday report. The institute collaborated with the National Park Service on the southern Nevada survey.
Bald eagles migrate from the mountainous Northwest to the Colorado River reservoirs separating southern Nevada from Arizona during winter months.
The Jan. 3 through Jan. 17 count found the bald eagle, a national icon, appears to be rebounding since 1963, when 417 nesting pairs were known to exist in the contiguous 48 states. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering removing the bird from the endangered species list.
Fletcher said that along with the 87 bald eagles counted, there was one golden eagle and four eagles of unspecified type.
The count coincided with a national eagle-counting effort. Counting at Willow Beach on Lake Mohave was extended through Jan. 18, Fletcher said, and teams returned to some other sites to gather data after high winds and bad weather hampered earlier efforts.
Last year, 67 bald eagles were counted on lakes Mead and Mohave, the same number as in 2005.
The tally was 60 in 2004, 68 in 2003, 79 in 2002 and 60 in 2001.
The bald eagle was declared an endangered species in 1967 for much of the United States except for areas north of the 40th parallel, especially Alaska.
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Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal,
