YORKTOWN — The Wildlife Center of Virginia released an adult bald eagle at the American Revolution Museum in Yorktown Wednesday that had been injured in York County and a patient at the center since early October.
The eagle was released by the center’s president, Ed Clark. Museum staff estimated somewhere between 300 and 400 people were on hand.
The bald eagle, #23-3518, was rescued after likely being hit by a vehicle in York County, Clark said in his remarks. On Sept. 23, it was found along a roadway, where local wildlife rehabilitators were able to capture the bird and provide stabilizing care before it was transferred to the center. An examination by the center revealed that in addition to bruising and a fractured left wing, the bird was suffering from the effects of lead toxicosis — or lead poisoning.
Once treatment was completed and the eagle was deemed healthy, a daily exercise regimen was started to build up the eagle’s strength. According to the center, while most eagles struggle during their first weeks of exercise, this eagle showed great strength and flight from the start. After just a month of flight conditioning, the eagle was cleared for release.
The Wildlife Center of Virginia said 2023 has been a record-breaking year for bald eagle admissions at the center. As of Dec. 26, 70 eagles have received veterinary and rehabilitative care at the Waynesboro-based wildlife hospital.
“The good news is we’ve got more eagles than we’ve ever had before. The bad news is they’re getting in new kinds of trouble that they never got into before. This is fine eagle habitat in Tidewater, Virginia — big rivers, tidal rivers, lots of fish,” Clark said. “That’s where eagles are supposed to live. But we’ve also got a lot of human development down here which has consumed major portions of that habitat. So as the population has grown and continues to grow, there’s no room for Eagles down here anymore, and they’re moving further and further west.”
“The fact is people say, oh, they’re great to have them back in the Shenandoah Valley. Well, they’re not back in the Shenandoah Valley. They’ve been pushed into the Shenandoah Valley. They never lived there before,” he said. “It was not good habitat and there’s not big water for them to find fish. So as a result, their food choices have changed and they have become scavengers.”
Clark went on to explain that creates a new problem. As scavengers, eagles eat the remains of animals left in the field by hunters during the fall and winter. When a hunter shoots a deer, the hunter removes the internal organs and leaves them in the field.
“That’s what we were all taught to do. But now we know that those internal organs, if the hunter is using a lead-based bullet, even a copper-jacketed lead bullet, a major amount of that bullet’s weight and lead fragments is found in those internal organs,” he explained.
Lead Poisoning is now affecting more than 70% of the eagles that come to Clark’s hospital. Sometimes it is the primary cause of disability, and other times it is a contributory cause, he said. If they get poisoned, if it’s not enough to kill them, it can still be enough to affect their vision, their nervous system and their reaction time.
The Wildlife Center of Virginia was founded in 1982.
“We are a nonprofit organization that has been around going on 42 years. We started in 1982. We are the leading teaching and research hospital for wildlife medicine in the world,” Clark explained. “So, we trained veterinary students from every vet school in the United States and Canada. Students, professionals, graduates from 40 other countries come to Waynesboro, Virginia, to study with our staff to apply general veterinary skills in the very specialized world of clinical wildlife medicine.
“Now, there are lots of places around the country that care for injured animals and fix them up and turn them loose and good for them and their colleagues and we value their work,” he added. “What makes us different is that fixing the individual animal is not the end of our effort. It’s the beginning, when we diagnose that there’s a problem. We don’t only want to know how it’s affecting that patient. We want to know if it’s still in the environment and what we need to do to identify it and get it out of the environment if it continues to present a risk.”
Clark cited as an example the center’s work to help ban a pesticide that was killing 2 million birds a year. Taking it off the market 25 years ago has resulted in the saving of more than 50 million birds, he said.
More information on this record-breaking year, including where eagles are coming from and how they’ve been injured, can be found on the wildlife hospital’s website.
Additional information about this particular eagle’s case history is also available on the center’s website.
