A Troubling Chapter in the Bald Eagle's Success Story

SITKA, Alaska — A smile crinkled Steve Johnson's face as he opened the express-mail package on his desk. The box was big enough to hold a new computer, but it was lined with insulation -- and what Johnson extracted, frozen solid in separate plastic bags, were the body, talons, wings and head of a bald eagle. A separate bag held several long white tail feathers.

"Have you ever held a dead eagle?" he asked an astonished co-worker.

Johnson is a Tlingit Indian of the Sitka tribe of Alaska, and his extraordinary package was part of a striking environmental success story -- the rescue of the American bald eagle from the edge of extinction.

Thirty years ago, as a result of pesticides, water pollution, hunting and other factors, bald eagles had vanished from all but the most remote corners of the country that had made them a national symbol. Today, they can be found in every state except Hawaii, and are even making their home in a New York City park.

But the eagles' comeback, still fragile at best, is threatened by an unusual confluence of factors. And, paradoxical as it may seem, Johnson's package is linked to the policies and institutions that made the resurgence possible as well as to the new dangers that threaten it.

What enabled eagles to return to areas they had vanished from was a nationwide effort to control pesticides and water pollution, plus the strictest wildlife protection law on the federal books.

The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act says that anyone who so much as collects a fallen eagle feather off a forest floor could face as much as a year in jail and a $5,000 fine.

The sole significant exemption from the ban is for Native Americans, who have long venerated eagles in their religious observances and have used eagle feathers, heads and talons in ceremonies and tribal regalia.

That's where Johnson and his unusual package come in.

For more than three decades, the National Eagle Repository, an obscure federal agency near Denver, has quietly collected deceased eagles from zoos, highway departments and game wardens, and distributed them to people so they could carry on religious and cultural practices without having to hunt or trap live birds. The repository sends about 1,700 deceased eagles each year to Native Americans across the country.

However, the system of legal protections and government-controlled distribution of eagle parts to Native Americans is showing signs of breaking down.