[Bristol-Birds] Fw: [TN-Bird] Re: exceedingly rare oddity-- TWRA's enormous opportunity
- From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Bristol-birds" <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:37:16 -0400
----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Hatcher
To: csloan1973@xxxxxxxxx ; 'TN-Bird Listserv'
Cc: Cecere, Al ; Danielle Steckley ; Beth Parker ; Nancy Zagaya ; Sterling
Daniels ; Polly Rooker ; Chris Simpson ; Scott Somershoe
Sent: July 16, 2012 02:30
Subject: [TN-Bird] Re: exceedingly rare oddity-- TWRA's enormous opportunity
We need to set the record straight concerning the following ASSUMPTION of past
"tragic waste of TWRA's Nongame funds" involved with hacking of Golden Eagles
in Tennessee. This is not the case; GOEA hacking, per se, has never been
funded by TWRA. As Paul Harvey used to say, "Here is the rest of the story" -
once again.
Due to lack of documentation of prior GOEA nesting in Tennessee (see below),
GOEA hacking in Tennessee was given the lowest of all priorities in TWRA's
Endangered Species Strategic Plan in 1990. The only way it would be allowed to
be done would be if: 1) funding would need to come from non-TWRA sources; 2)
no new hack tower would be constructed, and 3) TWRA would not provide the hack
site attendants. We thought that would be the end of that, but then, a
non-TWRA Golden Eagle reintroduction proponent raised the money from a private
donor to completely fund the project. A prior bald eagle hack site volunteer,
living next to our former Bald Eagle hack tower on Chickamauga lake,
volunteered to be a Golden Eagle hack site attendant there. A total of 37
Golden Eagles were hacked and released there from 1995 through 2000. Increased
numbers of GOEA's showed up during the next few winter months on the adjacent
Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge for viewing during the Sandhill Crane Festivals, etc.
The same non-TWRA funding principle was carried out by the American Eagle
Foundation (AEF) with the hacking of 10 Golden Eagles on Douglas Lake from 2001
through 2006. AEF utilized facilities that Dollywood had constructed for Bald
Eagle restoration. AEF utilized the available hack tower for release of the
young GOEA's that its non-releasable captive adult had produced. Since 2007,
these adult GOEA's have not been allowed to produce young.
Scott Somershoe had asked an appropriate question in January, 2007, "Why have
GOEA's been hacked in Tennessee?" The following is my reply, with other
pertinent GOEA background information.
I hope these records will be useful, particularly as we continue to study and
learn more about GOEA's in Tennessee.
Bob Hatcher
Retired TWRA NG-ES Coordinator (1978-2001), and
AEF Eagle Consultant and Correspondent
Brentwood, TN
EagleMail@xxxxxxxxxx or hatcher2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
January 08, 2007 5:52 PM
Subject: Golden Eagles in Tennessee
Scott Somershoe, State Ornithologist
Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency
Nashville, TN
Scott.Somershoe@xxxxxxxxxxx
Scott,
You ask a good question: "I have to ask, why are golden eagles being
'reintroduced' to TN when they did not occur here originally and thus we are
introducing a species." As Bruce Anderson reports, historical nesting in
Tennessee was a point of discussion before the hacking of Golden Eagles was
begun. The following points have been some of the pros and cons of those
discussions.
TOS co-founder Albert Ganier reported in TOS' The Migrant that he had observed
at least two Golden Eagle nests in Van Buren County during the 1930's. However,
he personally did not see the nests until after the active nesting seasons were
complete, and observed no adults or young at the nests. Ganier had climbed into
several eagle nests before that, and felt he could distinguish an eagle nest
from other nests (it was not near a large body of water). I did a quick search
today without finding those original Ganier references. However, I find a
reference to one of the one of those nests near Fall Creek Falls in Ganier's
article about Peregrine Falcon nests in the September, 1940 Migrant, page 54:
"The last mentioned point is of great interest in that it is a massive
sandstone cliff, more than 200 feet sheer and jutting out of the southeast
escarpment of the Caney Creek Canyon. Here was the Golden Eagle's eyrie some
years back, and here is the present eyrie of a pair of peregrine falcons...."
There are records of significant numbers of Golden Eagles that historically
frequented the hills of Cannon and nearby Rutherford County. During the
mid-1980's, TWRA's Rutherford County Wildlife Officer, Teddy Hollis, orally
advised that there were enough Golden Eagles to be seen in Rutherford County,
where he lived as a child in the early 1950's, that birders from Nashville
would travel there to see them. He reported that one of his neighbors trapped a
"nesting Golden Eagle" and placed it in a cage at a country grocery store,
where large numbers of people came to see it. He stated that the Rutherford
County Wildlife Officer at the time, Walter Taylor, made them release the
eagle. I asked Teddy Hollis if he would send me a letter describing these
childhood observations, but he never got around to it. I have never seen a
written account of that nesting report. Walter Taylor was still a TWRA officer
in Rutherford County in the late 1960's, but he had died by the time of this
report from Teddy Hollis.
The larger numbers of Golden Eagles were apparently in Cannon and Rutherford
Counties primarily during the winter months, if not altogether. They still
frequented a Cannon County site (near Shiloh Church) enough during the 1970's
that it was checked each year for several years during the mid-winter eagle
count, after we began them in 1979 as part of the national annual mid-winter
counts. After a few years of no sightings there in the 1980's, it was not
checked further during mid-winter counts.
In the 1980's, Mr. Frank Barker, then President of a bank in Dunlap, TN, took
me to a Sequatchie County site where he enthusiastically described seeing a
large "eagle on a bluff nest" during his teenage days of about the 1920's. The
site was near Highway 127, just east of the Sequatchie Valley, and overlooking
the rugged headwaters of North Chickamauga Creek, which flows to the east (to
the Tennessee River) away from Sequatchie Valley. I of course can't be sure it
had been an actual eagle nest, but, if so, it was much more Golden Eagle
habitat that Bald Eagle habitat. Golden Eagles continued in more recent years
to be seen occasionally in the Sequatchie Valley during the winter months. We
had a volunteer who searched for them during mid-winter eagle counts of the
1980's, but after not finding any for several years, we finally stopped winter
eagle surveys there.
The most comprehensive known study of Golden Eagle nesting in the Southern
Appalachian states was reported during 1990 in the Wilson Bulletin. They found
several written reports of Golden Eagles nesting in the Southern Appalachians,
but none was judged adequate to actually document that Golden Eagles had nested
in those states by 1990, except for very limited nesting resulting from hacking
in Georgia in the 1980's. The link to that Wilson Bulletin report is
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Wilson/v102n04/p0693-p0698.pdf.
We considered the Wilson Bulletin report when preparing TWRA's Endangered
Species strategic plans of the 1990's. We therefore placed hacking of Golden
Eagles as the last of all priority actions within those 5-6 year ES plans,
giving higher priority to species known to have historically reproduced in
Tennessee. This priority was carried forward in the 2000 - 2006 Strategic
Plan, which included the statement, "No hacking is proposed in Tennessee unless
it can be conducted at minimum cost (e.g. with donated eaglets and with
primarily volunteer hack attendant(s) at an existing hack facility)." I thought
that, when we installed such tight restrictions in the ES Strategic Plan, there
would be very little likelihood of hacking Golden Eagles in Tennessee. But....
In 1995, the Montgomery Zoo had a captive-bred Golden Eaglet that needed
hacking for release into the wild. The USFWS asked if TWRA could accept it for
hacking and release. We accepted it under the above Strategic Plan
guidelines. We had considerable interest in Golden Eagle hacking at key levels
outside and within TWRA. A strong non-TWRA GOEA proponent contacted an outside
donor, who agreed to pay for all significant expenses. A volunteer, who had
previously been our Bald Eagle hack site attendant, became TWRA's Golden Eagle
hack site attendant in the old Bald Eagle hack tower on Chickamauga Lake (at
junction of Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers). AEF had a pair of Golden Eagles,
which was allowed to produce young, and it later expanded there also. All
criteria of our stringent (we thought) Strategic Plan had been met, so we
accepted golden eagles for hacking under those terms.
All 47 Golden Eagles that have been hacked in Tennessee since 1995 have
followed the above low-priority guidelines cited for TWRA's Strategic Plans.
Based on the above reports, I cannot positively state whether Golden Eagles
historically nested in Tennessee. However, like the Wilson Bulletin author, I
have yet to find good documentation of it. Based on this lack of evidence, and
the lack of current known nesting anywhere in the Eastern United States after
releases in NC and GA, and our 47 releases in Tennessee since 1995, it is my
conclusion that we have adequately tested their current nesting adaptability in
the Southeast.
Thanks again, and I hope this background information will be helpful.
Bob Hatcher
Eagle Consultant to American Eagle Foundation, and
Retired TWRA NG-ES Coordinator (1978 - 2001)
*********************
From: tn-bird-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:tn-bird-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Chris Sloan
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 10:52 AM
To: TN-Bird Listserv
Subject: [TN-Bird] Re: exceedingly rare oddity-- TWRA's enormous opportunity
I'll add one comment to this. While this is certainly interesting news, I
would hate to see TWRA (again) waste valuable time and money on the issue of
breeding Golden Eagles. The nearest breeding population is 700+ miles away,
and there is scant evidence (nothing more than vague anecdotes) that this
species was ever a native breeding species in Tennessee in the modern era,
notwithstanding TWRA's prior (and very misguided in my opinion) efforts to
"reintroduce" (actually "introduce") the species to the state. In my opinion,
given the facts we have available, this fledgling is highly likely to be a
byproduct of those efforts. Certainly the bird should be cared for and
hopefully released, but beyond that, expediture of any of our desperately
limited non-game dollars on this bird is, in my opinion, a tragic waste, when
we have so many much more important issues that are already starved for funding.
The wintering Golden Eagles are a bit of a different story, and in my opinion
that side of the equation definitely merits further study and conservation
effort.
Chris Sloan
Nashville, TN
http://www.chrissloanphotography.com
****************
On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Wallace Coffey <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Here we stand at the doorstep to ornithological history !
Putting an exceedingly rare oddity of getting our hands on a fledgling Golden
Eagle in perspective, in Tennessee, is astounding.
It seems like when Scott Somershoe, Polly Rooker and an unnamed wildlife
officer from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency shared what they have been
very busy with, there should have been hundreds of us with Skype technology
standing to give them a thunderous ovation.
But maybe that is premature. Maybe they have not yet come to the best part of
their story and we are waiting breathlessly to hear the grand plan and news.
We hope we'll all see a satisfying sample of a ton of well-crafted digital
photos of the bird, it being delivered, identified, diagnosed, treated and
released. The results from the images being flashed electronically to the best
Golden Eagle minds available in at least eastern North America. To learn how
the experts affirmed and confirmed anything and everything known about this
juvenile and fledgling aging of this Golden Eagle. The US Fish & Wildlife has
said a fledgling is a juvenile that has taken the first flight from the nest,
but is not yet independent.
At least we will be excited to know how many weeks of age this fledgling is and
what sex the bird is. The protocols and standards are well known. Sex is
important because males and females have different tendencies to wander.
We are going to be amazed at how much TWRA has done during the past two weeks
the bird has been in captivity and while Somershoe has been up to his elbows in
diapers with his own fledgling which he has been helping care for at home.
It will be a thrill to see the names of all the advisors who have been pulled
into a quick response team to help guide TWRA thru these and the pending,
crucial, research opportunities that may not come our way again for decades, if
ever.
This fledgling Golden Eagle, found near Cordell Hull Lake, in upper Middle
Tennessee, is going to be a data bonanza.
Todd Katzner, Bob Hatcher, Jeff Cooper, Trish Miller, Al Cecere and Dave
Buhler are the kinds of names we'll be hearing about. Cecere and guys like
Buhler probably all have shared excellent input about how to go quickly high on
the mountain with this opportunity. Hatcher was a TWRA non-game and eagle guy
years ago when that was a good thing.
What they may already have in the works is a checklist of to-dos which we'll
see unfolding before our eyes within weeks if not months:
-- first is all the simple documentation mentioned above but also probably
the DNA samples which may tell us things our minds might never have imagined.
That probably goes without saying.
-- not only will this bird be a public spectacle and public relations coup
for TWRA but it will carry another first. The first Golden Eagle fledgling
from this southern region to every go aloft carrying one of the sexy and
data-dumping, non-invasive, monitoring scheme of a novel high-frequency GPS-GSM
telemetry systems for tracking Golden Eagles among other migratory birds. It
uses solar -powered transmitters and cellphone transmissions to relay satellite
track data every few minutes or even every few seconds as needed. It was
designed by Katzner's company, Cellular Tracking Technologies LLC. There are
Golden Eagles transmitting data with these systems over much of North America
and even their breeding areas in Canada. But maybe never ever from a fledgling
Golden Eagle from our southern region.
-- for the first time we will know about any survival and what it does for
the next several years before it is old enough to breed. Does it, too, breed
in the region ? Is it part of a breeding population of Golden Eagles we have
known little about? Was it from a population that nest on high elevation cliff
faces or artificial structures or even in Tennessee trees ?
-- will the tracking of this bird lead us back to its parents or even near
the nest where it was fledged ? Will we learn if it can't survive or does not
survive this first winter ? Where will it winter ? Will we know the
transmission signal has not moved for days and go to find it downed again ?
Can it once again be nursed back to health and make another try ? Or do we
simply retrieve the transmitter to be used another day by whomever wants to own
it and burry the carcass and end this adventure ?
-- as a fledgling, it may have been within a few short miles of where it
hatched or actually within sight of the nest when TWRA picked it up. Will
tracking lead us to where it roosts and what preference there is for a
Tennessee roost site ?
-- will we learn that TWRA has plans to bait the site with dead deer
carcasses this winter and affix cameras to monitor all around this area with
several such cameras and baitings ? Will we not only get wildlife cam photos
of the parents but also of this bird feasting at one of the carcasses ? Will
we find out there are a dozen Golden Eagles are more in that vicinity ? The
Bristol Bird Club's Clinch Mountain Golden Eagle group determined with such a
set up that we had 15 Golden Eagles wintering in just one small part of Russell
County, VA a year ago.
-- will we soon find out that TWRA is following the same approach that the
Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has been busy at for the past
few winters by capturing those birds with a rocket net and placing the
Katzner-design satellite tracking units on them ? Then we will know if our
nesting birds are a sedentary couple that does not migrate but stays in the
area? Will we even learn, as Virginia and others have than wintering birds
wander over a large area that may include hundreds of miles of regular winter
travel around the area ? Will this fledgling or other tracked adults wander off
into the Cumberland's for a few weeks or wherever ? And, with tracking units,
find where they are nesting and watch next year's nest to see if more
fledglings survive into the wilds of Tennessee ?
-- will we learn that this is the first step in allowing TWRA to help guide
the placement of wind turbines on our mountain tops and protect our wintering
Golden Eagles and Bald Eagles ?
-- it was not like Somershoe needed to leaves messages and try to introduce
himself to Katzner with babbling baby eagle talk. Scott is a member of
Katzner's prestigious Eastern Golden Eagle Working Group which is based out of
the University of West Virginia. Scott has been working in collaboration with
biologists and wildlife managers from the US and Canada dedicated to developing
a more complete understanding of Golden Eagle life history and ecology
throughout eastern North America.
-- Katzner has recently been to Canada to see for himself where and what
was going on with a Golden Eagle found injured in New York state and sent back
to the wild with one of his hi-tech telemetry units. It was an amazing
research effort and it was fascinating what he learned.
-- Jeff Cooper is also a member of that team. He is a Tennessee Tech
University graduate who is working with Golden Eagle telemetry for the Virginia
Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. He probably has more than two dozen
satellite-tracked Golden Eagles in Canada right now which he trapped in western
Virginia during winter and is studying them. In early 2010, Cooper and his
colleagues captured four Golden Eagles here and outfitted them with GPS
transmitters. All four headed north by mid-April and then spent the breeding
season on the Ungava Peninsula in northern Quebec. Cooper gets back to
Cookeville every now and then and was there not long ago -- just a few miles
down the road from where the fledgling was picked up by TWRA. Cooper is one of
Katzner's important Golden Eagle guys. They recently spent time this early
summer in the western part of the country with Cooper climbing to many Golden
Eagle nests. He can smell the air and tell you the age of a fledgling.
-- Katzner-type satellite tracking units probably will cost only about
$2,500 at the present. Surely, all of these excellent biologists who feed at
the trough of many hundreds of thousands if not a combined million dollars
worth of research have responded to TWRA about how and where to fetch one on
the spur of the moment. If this fledgling Golden Eagle does not make it more
than a few days back in the wild, then there is a good opportunity to get the
unit back and cash it in to whomever sold it to TWRA --but all of that has
probably been thought thru very carefully. Even what computer system could be
used to download the tracking of this bird. We'll probably learn that TWRA
plans do that in downtown Nashville.
-- hopefully, down the road, we will learn that Virginia can help Tennessee
learn how to quickly get going with Golden Eagle trapping during the winter if
we then know where eagles can be found. Of course that is depending on how
much time guys like Cooper can spare while working at goal of trapping and
putting transmitters on 90 Bald Eagles on a military base in eastern Virginia
starting this winter.
Perhaps the Tennessee Ornithological Society has been asked for emergency
approval to fund the transmitter for $2,500. It would be one of the good
things they do on a rainy day with a rainy day
bank account surplus.
Just can't wait......
Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN
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