Julie
Well-known member
Eagle story includes dark Wyo chapter
Friday, June 29, 2007
[oas:casperstartribune.net/news/top_story/top:Middle1]
JARED MILLER
Star-Tribune capital bureau
CHEYENNE -- The removal of bald eagles from federal protection Thursday was a point of pride from sea to shining sea.
It also conjured memories about the darker periods in the birds' four-decade trudge toward recovery.
One of the most notorious chapters occured in 1971 in Wyoming, when more than 700 of the birds are thought to have been gunned down by shooters in helicopters or killed by poison.
"It was really kind of devastating," said Casper resident Bart Rea, a semi-retired petroleum engineer and longtime bird enthusiast who in the summer of 1971 stored eagle carcasses in his freezer as evidence of the killings.
The events of that summer began when hikers discovered about two dozen dead eagles in Jackson Canyon west of Casper Mountain. It was eventually determined that the birds died after feeding on animal carcasses laced with thallium sulfate, a poison used widely at the time to kill coyotes.
The birds apparently survived long enough to return to their perches and, after the poison kicked in, rained down dead on the canyon floor.
As the summer wore on, public awareness about the killings grew, and reports about dead birds streamed in. Rea, a member of the local chapter of the Audubon Society, responded to eagle deaths across the state.
In the process of retrieving an eagle carcass near the Casper airport, Rea and a fellow birder happened to notice a shotgun and spent shells inside a helicopter parked at the airport.
The helicopter door was open, and a man was working on the machine. Rea's companion snapped a photograph.
The man in the photo turned out to be James Vogan, a balding, heavy-set helicopter pilot from Murray, Utah.
Afraid he had been discovered, Vogan turned himself in and admitted using the helicopter to help kill more than 500 golden and bald eagles in Wyoming.
"This was the way the whole helicopter shooting incident all broke loose," Rea said.
Vogan later testified about the slaughter to a U.S. Senate subcommittee. He said he knew of $15,000 paid to the flying service that owned the helicopter by a Wyoming sheep rancher named Herman Werner.
Werner, owner of one of the largest sheep operations in the state, ran a big spread on the North Platte River between Rawlins and Saratoga.
Vogan's testimony sparked anger in the nation's capital, and Interior Secretary Rogers C.B. Morton called the shootings a "national outrage," Time magazine reported in August 1971.
An Interior Department official termed it "absolutely sickening" ... a sordid story" ... "a cold, callous, deliberate defiance of federal and state law," according to another media report from 1971.
By that time, bald eagles were already protected by many state and federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act.
After suffering the devastating impacts of the pesticide known as DDT, bald eagles numbered about 2,000 in the United States outside Alaska. The golden eagle population had dipped to around 10,000 birds, also as a result of DDT and other habitat changes.
The federal government filed charges against Werner, but they lacked hard evidence to back up Vogan's testimony. The biggest: Nobody could find the dead birds.
As it turned out, the U.S. Air Force around that time was looking for ways to test its new, state-of-the-art heat-seeking technology. Serendipitously, an Air Force officer mentioned the equipment to an assistant Interior Department secretary named Nathanial Reed.
Reed, who had just been appointed by President Nixon, came up with three tests for the new gear. They were: Learn more about elk migration in Olympic National Park, track whale migration in the Pacific, and find the dead eagles in Wyoming.
The officer later returned to say that the heat-sensitive equipment was no match for the depths of the ocean nor the tree canopy in Olympic National Park. But he had the eagles.
The Air Force had located a "hot spot" on Werner's ranch created by the decomposing carcasses of around 60 eagles eventually unearthed there.
Werner was charged with the slaughter, but he never faced trial. Days before he was to appear in court, Werner was killed in an automobile crash in Rawlins.
The upshot, Rea said, was that eagles were no longer being savaged, and President Nixon signed an executive order banning the use of poison to kill predators.
"I think it was very directly related to this," Rea said of the executive order.
The story also heightened awareness about eagles across the country, and helped secure their recovery, Rea said.
"I think the public is so much more aware of the general conditions and the history of the eagles," he said. "I think it's very unlikely it will ever get as out of hand as it was before."
Power companies responded by modifying above-ground power lines to reduce the number of eagles killed by electrocution -- a big problem back then.
"I remember walking along the power poles in the Cottonwood oil field in Washakie County, and about every third pole there would be a dead eagle or an eagle skeleton," Rea said. "This was common throughout the West."
Eagles remain a problem for Wyoming sheep ranchers. Ironically, bald eagles are not thought to prey on sheep or lambs. Golden eagles, however, killed 1,800 sheep and lambs in the state last year.
"Ranchers have never had a problem with bald eagles," said Bill Taliaferro, a Rock Springs-area sheep rancher. "Goldens are the problem all the way from Texas to Canada."
Wyoming continues to be part of the national discussion about bald eagles.
Federal prosecutors are pursuing charges against a member of Wyoming's Northern Arapaho Tribe who in 2005 shot an eagle for use in a religious ceremony.
Lawyers for 22-year-old Winslow Friday of Ethete contend that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has refused to grant permits for tribal members to kill eagles, even though the permits are allowable under federal law.
Given the current population of 10,000 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the lower 48 states -- including more than 185 pairs in Wyoming -- the death of a few at the hands of American Indians probably isn't a major concern, Rea said.
"I'm not sure if the problem is significant enough that it really needs to be worried about," he said.
Reach capital bureau reporter Jared Miller at (307) 632-1244 or at [email protected]..
Friday, June 29, 2007
[oas:casperstartribune.net/news/top_story/top:Middle1]
JARED MILLER
Star-Tribune capital bureau
CHEYENNE -- The removal of bald eagles from federal protection Thursday was a point of pride from sea to shining sea.
It also conjured memories about the darker periods in the birds' four-decade trudge toward recovery.
One of the most notorious chapters occured in 1971 in Wyoming, when more than 700 of the birds are thought to have been gunned down by shooters in helicopters or killed by poison.
"It was really kind of devastating," said Casper resident Bart Rea, a semi-retired petroleum engineer and longtime bird enthusiast who in the summer of 1971 stored eagle carcasses in his freezer as evidence of the killings.
The events of that summer began when hikers discovered about two dozen dead eagles in Jackson Canyon west of Casper Mountain. It was eventually determined that the birds died after feeding on animal carcasses laced with thallium sulfate, a poison used widely at the time to kill coyotes.
The birds apparently survived long enough to return to their perches and, after the poison kicked in, rained down dead on the canyon floor.
As the summer wore on, public awareness about the killings grew, and reports about dead birds streamed in. Rea, a member of the local chapter of the Audubon Society, responded to eagle deaths across the state.
In the process of retrieving an eagle carcass near the Casper airport, Rea and a fellow birder happened to notice a shotgun and spent shells inside a helicopter parked at the airport.
The helicopter door was open, and a man was working on the machine. Rea's companion snapped a photograph.
The man in the photo turned out to be James Vogan, a balding, heavy-set helicopter pilot from Murray, Utah.
Afraid he had been discovered, Vogan turned himself in and admitted using the helicopter to help kill more than 500 golden and bald eagles in Wyoming.
"This was the way the whole helicopter shooting incident all broke loose," Rea said.
Vogan later testified about the slaughter to a U.S. Senate subcommittee. He said he knew of $15,000 paid to the flying service that owned the helicopter by a Wyoming sheep rancher named Herman Werner.
Werner, owner of one of the largest sheep operations in the state, ran a big spread on the North Platte River between Rawlins and Saratoga.
Vogan's testimony sparked anger in the nation's capital, and Interior Secretary Rogers C.B. Morton called the shootings a "national outrage," Time magazine reported in August 1971.
An Interior Department official termed it "absolutely sickening" ... a sordid story" ... "a cold, callous, deliberate defiance of federal and state law," according to another media report from 1971.
By that time, bald eagles were already protected by many state and federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act.
After suffering the devastating impacts of the pesticide known as DDT, bald eagles numbered about 2,000 in the United States outside Alaska. The golden eagle population had dipped to around 10,000 birds, also as a result of DDT and other habitat changes.
The federal government filed charges against Werner, but they lacked hard evidence to back up Vogan's testimony. The biggest: Nobody could find the dead birds.
As it turned out, the U.S. Air Force around that time was looking for ways to test its new, state-of-the-art heat-seeking technology. Serendipitously, an Air Force officer mentioned the equipment to an assistant Interior Department secretary named Nathanial Reed.
Reed, who had just been appointed by President Nixon, came up with three tests for the new gear. They were: Learn more about elk migration in Olympic National Park, track whale migration in the Pacific, and find the dead eagles in Wyoming.
The officer later returned to say that the heat-sensitive equipment was no match for the depths of the ocean nor the tree canopy in Olympic National Park. But he had the eagles.
The Air Force had located a "hot spot" on Werner's ranch created by the decomposing carcasses of around 60 eagles eventually unearthed there.
Werner was charged with the slaughter, but he never faced trial. Days before he was to appear in court, Werner was killed in an automobile crash in Rawlins.
The upshot, Rea said, was that eagles were no longer being savaged, and President Nixon signed an executive order banning the use of poison to kill predators.
"I think it was very directly related to this," Rea said of the executive order.
The story also heightened awareness about eagles across the country, and helped secure their recovery, Rea said.
"I think the public is so much more aware of the general conditions and the history of the eagles," he said. "I think it's very unlikely it will ever get as out of hand as it was before."
Power companies responded by modifying above-ground power lines to reduce the number of eagles killed by electrocution -- a big problem back then.
"I remember walking along the power poles in the Cottonwood oil field in Washakie County, and about every third pole there would be a dead eagle or an eagle skeleton," Rea said. "This was common throughout the West."
Eagles remain a problem for Wyoming sheep ranchers. Ironically, bald eagles are not thought to prey on sheep or lambs. Golden eagles, however, killed 1,800 sheep and lambs in the state last year.
"Ranchers have never had a problem with bald eagles," said Bill Taliaferro, a Rock Springs-area sheep rancher. "Goldens are the problem all the way from Texas to Canada."
Wyoming continues to be part of the national discussion about bald eagles.
Federal prosecutors are pursuing charges against a member of Wyoming's Northern Arapaho Tribe who in 2005 shot an eagle for use in a religious ceremony.
Lawyers for 22-year-old Winslow Friday of Ethete contend that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has refused to grant permits for tribal members to kill eagles, even though the permits are allowable under federal law.
Given the current population of 10,000 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the lower 48 states -- including more than 185 pairs in Wyoming -- the death of a few at the hands of American Indians probably isn't a major concern, Rea said.
"I'm not sure if the problem is significant enough that it really needs to be worried about," he said.
Reach capital bureau reporter Jared Miller at (307) 632-1244 or at [email protected]..