An unusually large amount of late-season snow cover is keeping snow geese in the area longer and could be contributing to an increase in eagle deaths, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service special agent.
Eagles prey on weak or injured geese. Snow geese follow the snow line, and the ample snowfall of late has kept them from advancing farther north. The eagles that follow them have remained, too, said Special Agent Ken Dulik.
"That's why there have been so many eagle deaths," Dulik said this week. "They've been here this spring longer than normal, and in great numbers."
Dulik is currently investigating three eagle shootings in the Huron area. He also knows of six other eagles that died recently -- three were eating roadkill when they were hit by vehicles, one died of unknown causes and two died of lead poisoning after eating prey that had been shot.
Eagles have become a common sight in parts of South Dakota thanks largely to conservation efforts over the past two decades. Nationally, the bald eagle population has recovered to the point that the birds were removed from the federal list of threatened and endangered species in 2007.
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Other federal and state laws still protect eagles, though, and Dulik said the person or people responsible for the three recent eagle shootings could be punished with up to a year of incarceration and a $100,000 fine.
"It's a difficult case to make," Dulik said. "It comes down to somebody knows that a wrong has been committed here, and I'm hoping they'll come forward and talk."
Dulik said tipsters can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a money reward.
The first of the three shot eagles was recovered Dec. 1 near Tulare. It was an immature bald eagle, and it was found alive but died on a veterinarian's operating table.
A gold eagle was recovered Dec. 27 near Carpenter. It also was alive, but had to be euthanized.
Another immature bald eagle was dead when it was discovered March 27 east of Hitchcock and north of Huron.
Dulik said he does not know why the eagles were shot, but he said some people shoot eagles to sell their feathers on the black market. It's possible the shooters responsible for the three recent eagle deaths were trying to harvest the eagles for that purpose, he said, but were scared off by a passing motorist. It's also possible that the killing was for mere sport.
The bald eagle was adopted as the national emblem in 1782. Human interference and the introduction of pesticides -- especially DDT, which dangerously thins egg shells -- reduced the bald eagle population to an estimated 487 breeding pairs in the lower 48 states during the early 1960s.
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Efforts to protect and grow the bald eagle population drove the estimated number of breeding pairs to 9,789 in 2006, the last year of available data on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Web site.
