[TN-Bird] Re: exceedingly rare oddity-- TWRA's enormous opportunity
- From: Chris Sloan <csloan1973@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: TN-Bird Listserv <tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2012 10:52:11 -0500
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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