Bald eagle to come off endangered list

Seven years after the US government moved to take the bald eagle off the endangered species list, the Bush administration intends to complete the step by February, prodded by a frustrated property owner in Minnesota. The delisting, supported by mainstream environmental groups, would represent a formal declaration that the eagle population has sufficiently rebounded, increasing more than 15-fold from its 1963 nadir to more than 7,000 nesting pairs. The next challenge is to ensure the bald eagle's continued protection. "By February 16th, the bald eagle will be delisted," said Marshall Jones, deputy director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. "We'll be clear so people won't think, 'It's open season on bald eagles.' No way." "It's not as though we're pulling away the Endangered Species Act and you have nothing else," said John Kostyak, senior counsel at the National Wildlife Federation, which supports the delisting. Although the majestic raptor will no longer be covered by the Endangered Species Act (ESA), two earlier laws, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, are expected to provide protections for the bald eagle, while giving freedoms to private property interests who often feel constrained by the ESA. The delisting had been prompted by a lawsuit between the federal government and Minnesota property owner Edmund Contoski. An empty nest on Contoski's property had prevented him from developing it into house lots, because federal law barred any building within 330 feet of the nest site. Contoski tracked down the Pacific Legal Foundation, which provided free legal services for the case. Pacific Legal, which has a record of challenging endangered-species rules, filed the lawsuit in 2005 and won the case in August of this year. The federal judge who decided the case gave the government a deadline of February 2007 to determine if the species should maintain its endangered species status. Amid the often conflicting agendas of politics, preservation and development, experts say what now makes a compromise likely is the unexpected resilience of the eagle population and a consensus that regulations should be clear but flexible.