The History of America's Love—and Hate—for the Bald Eagle

Reposting an avian rollercoaster ride with Professor Jack E. Davis

Ahead of the Fourth of July, I’m revisiting a conversation about the bald eagle: America’s national symbol and, surprisingly, once one of its most hated birds.

As historian Jack E. Davis explains, the bald eagle was nearly extinct by the 1960s. Figures like John James Audubon despised the majestic bird, and the introduction of DDT accelerated their decline. Only in the past fifty years have bald eagles gone from reviled to revered in a story Davis calls “fraught with tragedy,” but also filled with redemption.

Professor Davis (University of Florida) is the author or editor of ten books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea. His latest book, The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird, was the subject of our conversation.

A condensed transcript, edited for clarity, is below. You can also listen to us on the Skipped History podcast:

Ben: To begin, can you discuss the debate over the Great Seal of the United States?

JED: Well, readers might be familiar with the popular perception that Benjamin Franklin wanted the wild turkey to be on the Great Seal, instead of the eagle.

That’s not true, although he did insist the turkey was an honest and hardworking bird, while the bald eagle was a craven thief because it stole fish from ospreys and other eagles. 

Interestingly enough, Franklin was on the first committee that Congress appointed on July 4th, 1776, to design a seal, along with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. They failed miserably. It wasn’t until six years later that Charles Thompson, the secretary of Congress, recognized that America would soon be going to Paris to sign a peace treaty and needed something to stamp into that parchment. Bald eagles were pretty much a daily sight in Philadelphia, and Thompson had the idea to put the eagle on the front of the Great Seal. 

Americans immediately fell in love with that image. They started adding the eagle to everything: business cards, military insignia, etc. And yet while they loved the image, they hated the species itself.

Ben: You describe this as “the paradox of the eagle.” Could you talk about early ornithologists' views of bald eagles?

JED: John James Audubon hated the bald eagle. 

You have to understand that ornithology in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was really about collecting and identifying birds. The field did not go deeply into studying the behavior of birds or even the birds’ relationship with their larger environment. Audubon was out there with his gun, shooting and collecting them so he could paint them later. 

And Audubon, like other ornithologists, bought into myths about the depravity of the bald eagle. Moreover, as Americans sought their “manifest destiny,” expanding westwards, they treated the bald eagle like a predator, much as they did wolves, coyotes, bears, and mountain lions. Audubon and countless others accused balds of stealing away with calves, pigs, and goats. Mothers were also advised not to leave their infants outside alone, lest a bald eagle carry it away to their nest.

None of this was possible. Sure, balds will fly away with a chicken any opportunity they get (as free-range chicken farmers have learned), but they can lift five pounds at most. 

Ben: You get the sense that anytime people in the late 1800s misplaced something large, they blamed eagles. It’s like if you forgot where your car was parked today and thought, must’ve been an eagle!

JED: And despite the myth having no veracity, it spread well into the 20th century. Americans really saw it as their civic duty to kill eagles.  

Ben: I noted that you conducted a Newspapers.com search for “bald eagle shot” from 1850 to 1920 and found over 180,000 results, which is stunning.

How did World War I mark both a low point and a turning point in the U.S.’s relationship with the bald eagle?

JED: America entered the war in 1917, and in many places where eagles had been seen all the time—the eastern seaboard, parts of the midwest—balds were virtually absent. It got to the point that many people believed bald eagles were Rocky Mountain birds; that they just weren’t from the East, where they were once so prolific.

And really, it wasn’t until World War II that Congress began protecting them. A growing chorus of citizens feared the eagle would go the way of animals like the passenger pigeon. In 1940, Congress passed the Bald Eagle Protection Act, recognizing that we were denying the bird of freedom its own freedom on the cusp of World War II.

Sadly, five years later, in August 1945, DDT was released to the open market.

Ben: —leading to the second almost-extinction of bald eagles. 

JED: Yes, DDT was an immediate sensation in controlling insects, both in agriculture and as a household product for killing mosquitoes.

I think virtually everybody knows this story, but bird life was devastated by the widespread use of the chemical. So was fish life. And bald eagles are fishing raptors, so DDT that made its way into waterways got into fish, and then into eagles.

Ben: By 1963, there was an all-time low of 487 bald eagle nesting pairs in the 48 states. Even still, producers kept insisting DDT was safe. To prove the point, you describe an industry film where schoolchildren eating bologna and PB&J sandwiches were cannoned with DDT.

JED: I've often thought about those kids if that was indeed actual chemicals used.

Ben: Maybe the filmmakers were birds of prey, doing their best to get back at humanity.

Can you describe the restoration efforts that followed in the 70s and 80s? I was really interested in your conversation about “hacking.”

JED: 1972 was a watershed year for the bald eagle. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) strengthened the penalty under the Eagle Protection Act, which by then was called the Bald Eagle and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Congress also passed the Clean Water Act, which went a long way toward cleaning up waters and helping bring back the marine life that bald eagles depend on. Also that year, the EPA banned the sale of DDT, a big, big move for lots of wildlife (and us).

And then four years later, in 1976, the Fish and Wildlife Service launched an eagle hacking program, initially in New York.

In hacking, FWS went to places like northern Michigan and Minnesota, where there were still somewhat healthy bald eagle populations. They took eaglets out of nests—only the smallest ones that were least likely to survive—and relocated them to hack towers, which were essentially giant cages on stilts. Inside were eagles' nests, and FWS would help raise eaglets until they flew off into the nearby wild.

The program was a massive, massive success, and along with the spirit and perseverance of the eagles themselves, helped restore the bald eagle population. 

Ben: As you write, “It was not these steadfast birds that changed. They carried on as they always had… What changed was American sensibilities.”

JED: Yes, and the eagle was removed from the endangered species list in 2007. The Bald Eagle and Golden Eagle Protection Act still remains, but is inconsistently enforced, depending on who’s in the White House. Under the law, you’re not supposed to build within 330 feet of an eagle’s nest, but exceptions are made all the time on behalf of real estate developers, for example. As the bald eagle population is expanding, and as our own population is expanding, there are increasing conflicts between the two. 

That said, the majority of Americans don’t want to see eagles suffer any harm. They recognize that when eagles are healthy, the environment is healthy, which means we are better off, too. 

So the bald eagle’s history is fraught with tragedy, but it’s also one of redemption and restoration. Today, the bald eagle population, continent-wide, is estimated to be the same as it was before European contact, right around 500,000, which I think is just spectacular.

Ben: As you conclude, “If animals form a portrait of our virtues and vices, as many contend, then bald eagles have shown us in our... coexistence with them that our nature is predisposed to virtue.”