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Apr 8, 2007 10:35 pm US/Eastern
Bald Eagle Hatches On Santa Catalina Island
AVALON, Calif. (CBS) ―
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An American bald eagle (File)
A bald eagle egg has hatched in the wild on Santa Catalina Island, only the third since chemical contamination there wiped out the iconic birds several decades ago, conservation officials said Sunday.
The eaglet emerged from its shell sometime late Friday or early Saturday, according to Catalina Island Conservancy officials. Its sex had yet to be determined.
The hatchling's egg was one of four laid last month on the east end of the 76-square-mile island located off the coast of the Los Angeles County mainland. Two hatched last week and the fourth could hatch at any time, officials said.
Their parents are a 15-year-old male and a 14-year-old female, both hatched in captivity.
Contamination from chemical dumping devastated the bald eagle population on Catalina and did tremendous damage to fish and seabird populations around the chain of eight Channel Islands off Southern California. The last bald eagle egg hatched in the wild on Catalina was in the 1940s, said Ann M. Muscat, president and CEO of the conservancy.
More than thirty years after the dumping stopped, there are now 23 bald eagles regularly on Santa Catalina, including five nesting pairs.
Bald eagles were officially declared an endangered species in 1967 in all areas of the United States south of the 40th parallel, under a law that preceded the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
In July of 1995, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service upgraded the status of bald eagles in the lower 48 states to "threatened."
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
