Despite declining biodiversity around the world, some species are beating the odds and making comebacks. One such animal is the bald eagle, which suffered near extinction in Maryland but recovered to "thriving numbers," Nottingham MD reported.
This year, the Maryland Bird Conservation Partnership estimated there are more than 1,400 breeding pairs of bald eagles in the state. This number is a huge increase from the 62 breeding pairs Maryland Department of Natural Resources biologist Glenn Therres observed four decades ago.
Therres began conducting aerial surveys of the birds and counting their nests in 1985, according to Nottingham MD. He witnessed the number of breeding pairs rise in the 1990s and reach 390 in 2004, when the DNR ended the practice.
Scientists such as Therres have largely attributed the species' recovery to a 1972 DDT ban. Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane is a pesticide, and it caused reproductive failures and thin eggshells among birds including bald eagles, the DNR explains. The concentration of DDT in Chesapeake Bay-area eagles' eggs was among the highest nationwide.
Other efforts, such as the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area Protection Act of 1984, helped restore the region and establish "critical areas" that protected bald eagle nest sites. Today, the birds nest across the state, and Chesapeake Bay hosts the most bald eagles in the United States outside of Alaska.
The return of bald eagles to Maryland bodes well for the species as a whole. Bald eagles were nationally reclassified from endangered to threatened in 1995 and delisted in 2007. Their recovery also supports biodiversity and ecosystem functions.
"To recover a species that is so widely distributed and that declined to such a serious level — that is something to celebrate," said Gwen Brewer, a DNR science program manager, per Nottingham MD.
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