The bald eagle is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle, which occupies the same niche as the bald eagle in the Palearctic. Its range includes most of Canada and Alaska, all of the contiguous United States, and northern Mexico. It is found near large bodies of open water with an abundant food supply and old-growth trees for nesting.
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is a U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of the Interior which oversees the management of fish, wildlife, and natural habitats in the United States. The mission of the agency is "working with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people."
Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research, Inc. is a nonprofit conservation organization in Newark, Delaware, dedicated to indigenous wild bird rehabilitation, especially rehabilitation efforts related to oil spills. It is notable for its research and rehabilitation efforts concerning wildlife affected by oil spills, which have been international in scope.
The Alaska Raptor Center, formerly the Alaska Raptor Rehabilitation Center, is a raptor rehabilitation center in Sitka in the U.S. state of Alaska. Located on a 17–acre campus bordering the Tongass National Forest and the Indian River. The mission of the Alaska Raptor Center is to promote and enhance wild populations of raptors and other avian species through rehabilitation, education and research. Although the main patients are raptors, especially bald eagles, the center will take any bird in need of care. The Alaska Raptor Center receives between 100–200 birds a year, with many suffering from some sort of trauma. They have treated birds with injuries from electrocution, collisions, gunshot wounds, leg hold traps, starvation, disease and lead poisoning.
The Alaska SeaLife Center is a public aquarium and Alaska's only permanent marine mammal rehabilitation facility. It is located on the shores of Resurrection Bay in Seward. It opened in May 1998, and is dedicated to understanding and maintaining the integrity of the marine ecosystem of Alaska through research, rehabilitation, conservation, and public education. It is the only facility in the world specifically dedicated to studying the northern marine environment and the only one designed at the outset to combine research with public education and visitor components. The Alaska SeaLife Center generates and shares scientific knowledge to promote understanding and stewardship of Alaska's marine ecosystems.
Raptor rehabilitation is a field of veterinary medicine dealing with care for sick or injured birds of prey, with the goal of returning them to the wild. Since raptors are highly specialized predatory birds, special skills, facilities, equipment, veterinary practices and husbandry methods are necessary.
The Cape May National Wildlife Refuge is a protected area on the Cape May Peninsula in Cape May County, New Jersey. It is part of the National Wildlife Refuge System and managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Established in January 1989 with 90 acres (0.36 km2) acquired from the Nature Conservancy, it has since grown to more than 11,000 acres (45 km2) in size, and plans call for its further expansion to more than 21,200 acres (86 km2). It comprises three distinct and non-contiguous units: the Delaware Bay Division, the Great Cedar Swamp Division and the Two Mile Beach Unit. Located in the Middle Atlantic coastal forests ecoregion, the cape provides habitat for large numbers of migratory birds.
Lindsay Wildlife Experience, formerly known as Lindsay Wildlife Museum, is a family museum and wildlife rehabilitation center in Walnut Creek, California. Lindsay is the first wildlife hospital established in the United States, and a popular family museum in the East Bay Area near San Francisco. Founded in Walnut Creek in 1955, the museum's programs "connect people with wildlife to inspire responsibility and respect for the world we share." The museum features a number of California wildlife exhibits, natural history specimens, and a special theater offering a look into one of the hospital's many wildlife treatment rooms. The rehabilitation center—still among the largest in the country—treats more than 5,000 injured, sick, or orphaned wild animals each year.
In the United States, the eagle feather law provides many exceptions to federal wildlife laws regarding eagles and other migratory birds to enable Native Americans to continue their traditional, spiritual and cultural practices.
The Cascades Raptor Center is a nature center and wildlife hospital in Eugene, Oregon that specializes in raptor rehabilitation. As of November 2020, permanent inhabitants of the center include 37 individual birds from 21 species.
Wildlife rehabilitation is the process of caring for injured, sick, orphaned, or displaced wild animals with the goal of releasing them back into their natural habitat. It involves medical treatment, temporary housing, and specialized care for a variety of species, from birds and mammals to reptiles and amphibians. Wildlife rehabilitation combines veterinary science, wildlife conservation, and animal welfare to ensure that animals have the best chance for recovery and survival after facing challenges such as injury, disease, or human interference.
The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act is a United States federal statute that protects two species of eagle. The bald eagle was chosen as a national emblem of the United States by the Continental Congress of 1782 and was given legal protection by the Bald Eagle Protection Act of 1940. This act was expanded to include the golden eagle in 1962. Since the original Act, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act has been amended several times. It currently prohibits anyone, without a permit issued by the Secretary of the Interior, from "taking" bald eagles. Taking is described to include their parts, nests, or eggs, molesting or disturbing the birds. The Act provides criminal penalties for persons who "take, possess, sell, purchase, barter, offer to sell, purchase or barter, transport, export or import, at any time or any manner, any bald eagle ... [or any golden eagle], alive or dead, or any part, nest, or egg thereof."
The National Eagle Repository is operated and managed under the Office of Law Enforcement of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service located at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge outside of Denver, Colorado. It serves as a central location for the receipt, storage, and distribution of bald and golden eagles that have been found dead. Eagles and eagle parts are available only to Native Americans enrolled in federally recognized tribes for use in religious and cultural ceremonies.
Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge is a dynamic landscape made up of forests, wetlands, tundra, lakes, mountains and glacial rivers bounded by the snowy peaks of the Alaska Range. This upper Tanana River valley has been called the "Tetlin Passage," because it serves as a major migratory route for birds traveling to and from Canada, the lower 48 and both Central and South America. Many of these birds breed and nest on the refuge. Others pass through on their way to breeding and nesting grounds elsewhere in the state. Migrants, including ducks, geese, swans, cranes, raptors and songbirds, begin arriving in the valley in April, and continue into early June. An estimated 116 species breed on Tetlin during the short summer, when long days and warm temperatures accelerate the growth of plants, insects and other invertebrates, providing a ready source of rich foods for nesting birds.
The Rocky Mountain Raptor Program is a 501(c)(3) non-profit wildlife conservation organization based in Fort Collins, Colorado that rescues, rehabilitates and releases injured birds of prey—including eagles, hawks, falcons and owls—and, through its comprehensive Environmental Education program, teaches the importance of preserving wildlife and wild places for future generations. RMRP has developed a national reputation for the treatment of raptor illness and injuries, cage design, volunteer management, community involvement, and youth development. Raptor patients receive fracture repair, wound care, fluids to combat dehydration, nutritious food, and regular medical attention to promote healing. Raptors that are permanently injured and therefore non-releasable may become an Educational Ambassador. These raptors are the cornerstone of our Environmental Education program, which makes more than 200 presentations each year throughout the region, teaching children and adults about the importance of protecting wildlife and wild places. The program's environmental education program, particularly in the K-12 sector, has developed an excellent reputation throughout Colorado. RMRP reaches more than 15,000 schoolchildren annually. Numerous outreach exhibits throughout the state reach hundreds of thousands of people annually. Rocky Mountain Raptor Program currently averages about one admission and several injured raptor calls each day, and 77% of treatable raptors are released.
R. T. "Skip" Wallen is an American artist based in the state of Alaska. He is best known for his stone lithographs of Alaskan wildlife and native peoples and for his monumental bronze sculptures. His original prints, watercolors, and small bronzes are found in museums and private collections around the world. His monumental bronze sculptures are found in major institutions and public spaces in the U.S. and Europe. He was one of only two living artists included in the landmark New York Kennedy Gallery exhibit, Alaskan Masters, in 1976. and has had one-man exhibitions of stone lithographs in Europe. He was recognized with an honorary doctorate in the arts in 2006.
Lady Baltimore was a non-releasable bald eagle in the care of the non-profit Juneau Raptor Center (JRC), in Juneau, Alaska. Lady Baltimore was found shot and injured on Alaska's Douglas Island in 2006. She had suffered injuries to her beak and one wing caused by a poacher. The injury to her beak caused the retina in her left eye to become detached, blinding her in that eye. Because of these injuries she had no depth perception, and could not be released into the wild.
The OWL Rehabilitation Society is a wildlife rescue and raptor rehabilitation centre permitted to care for sick, injured, and orphaned birds of prey which includes eagles, falcons, hawks, ospreys, owls, and vultures. OWL is located in Delta, British Columbia, Canada.
The Bird Treatment and Learning Center is a wildlife rehabilitation center based in Anchorage, Alaska. It was founded in the 1980s by a veterinarian James R. Scott, and some of its early activities were funded partially by money given to Scott by Exxon in the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. The center started to move their operations to Potter Marsh in the second half of the 2010s.
One Wing was a bald eagle injured during the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He ingested crude oil and, during the rescue process, fought his would-be-rescuers and broke his own wing. As a result it was amputated, and he lived out the rest of his life at the Bird Treatment and Learning Center in Anchorage. He served as a blood donor for other birds injured in the oil spill.
