Pymatuning State Park initiates eco-tour weekends for eagle enthusiasts
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Bruce Denniston of Grove City, Linda Armstrong, environmental education specialist, Pymatuning State Park, and Jason Baker, assistant park manager, on the watch for bald eagles.
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A vacant lot next to a car dealership on a highway in Western Pennsylvania may seem an odd place to encounter a symbol of wilderness and national ideals.
But there, with their backs to the urban landscape, a motley knot of observers trained binoculars on a tall white pine towering above a marsh teeming with waterfowl. Near the peak of the pine hung a jagged 5-foot-broad assembly of branches, vines and bark, and atop that mass shone the bright white head of an adult bald eagle.
"This nest has been here for several years now," explained Jason Baker, assistant park manager at Pymatuning State Park, in Crawford County, as he addressed the group. "We haven't seen the other adult today, but eagles are known to fly 50 miles or more in a day just to hunt. Nesting requires a lot of energy and constant hunting by the parents. The female spends most of her time on the nest and the male must hunt for her, the chicks and himself."
Baker's description of bald eagle nesting behavior was one small part of an Eagle Eco-Tour offered by Pymatuning State Park on two weekends last month. The 13 participants in the earlier outing, and 11 in the latter, saw eagles in several locations, learned how injured eagles and other raptors are cared for by rehabilitators, visited a nest abandoned due to disturbance, and enjoyed the spring waterfowl migration as a bonus. Besides Pymatuning State Park in Pennsylvania, the tours stopped at eagle-viewing sites on the lake's Ohio shoreline, several State Game Lands and unlikely urban settings. Eco-tour participants also visited a local winery, patronized popular restaurants and enjoyed the rustic comfort of Pymatuning's family cabins.
"I had no idea that the state parks were offering this kind of program, until now," said Dave Uhlig, of Erie. "It's good to learn about wildlife from people who know what they're talking about. Plus, it's a cheap weekend."
It wasn't necessarily a cheap weekend that park staff had in mind when they conceived the eco-tour, but affordability did not conflict with their objectives.
"We were sitting in the lunch room one day discussing how many eagles we were seeing around the lake," said Linda Armstrong, environmental education specialist at Pymatuning. "We wondered how we could share this with people who might be interested but don't know about eagles and their comeback across Pennsylvania. We decided to offer a tour, but for small numbers, so as not to disturb the wildlife or the ecosystem."
Bald eagles are huge birds of prey -- their wingspan can exceed 8 feet -- and they seek out nesting and hunting grounds near rivers, lakes and wetlands. Fish are their primary food, but the birds will take waterfowl or scavenge carrion when opportunities arise. The 17,000-acre shallow lake at Pymatuning State Park, rimmed by woodland and marsh, is ideal habitat. The park is so attractive to eagles that, as populations plummeted nationwide in the 19th and 20th centuries, Pymatuning remained the site of the sole surviving eagle nest in the state as late as 1980.
Several factors combined to decimate eagle populations. Destruction of wetlands and the development of river corridors destroyed habitat. Scientists agree, however, that the eagle's attraction to water and fish was its greatest liability. For decades after World War II, synthetic pesticides, especially DDT, washed from the land into rivers and lakes where the toxins accumulated in the bodies of fish. Eagles and other birds ingested DDT with their normal diets. Once ingested, DDT caused eagles to lay eggs with shells too fragile to bear the mother's weight, causing a plunge in nesting success. In 1972, due partly to the writings of Pittsburgh native Rachel Carson in "Silent Spring" (Mariner), most agricultural uses of DDT were banned in the United States.
In 1983, the Pennsylvania Game Commission began an eagle reintroduction effort, planting eagle chicks from the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, into man-made "hacking towers" and raising the birds by hand. Today, approximately 100 active nests dot the state's river shores and wetlands, and in August 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service revised the bald eagle's status from "endangered" to "threatened."
Six active nests now dot the shoreline of Pymatuning Reservoir.
"Water quality improvement is one of the biggest factors in eagle recovery," Baker said. "The better the water quality, the healthier the fish populations, the better it is for eagles."
The popularity of bald eagles is clear in the 350-mile journey to the eco-tour taken by Linda and Bill Harter of Ambler, a Philadelphia suburb.
"We had no idea where Pymatuning was, but we wanted to do this," said Linda Harter. "When we found out Pymatuning was in the opposite corner of the state, the distance did not dissuade us -- after all, I've gone to Alaska and seen eagles. When we arrived Friday afternoon, an eagle flew right over our cabin. It was an amazing sight."
Armstrong and Baker would not have invited eagle enthusiasts to drive across Pennsylvania at any other season.
"This is the best time to do this because it is the only time we can guarantee you'll see eagles," Baker said. "The trees are still bare and the birds are actively hunting and beginning to sit on the nests. Earlier in the winter can be a good time, but it is weather dependent. They'll be there one day, sitting out on the ice on the open lake, and be gone the next."
He explained that despite the eagles' size and allure, public knowledge about the species varies.
"Some people are into wildlife and are well aware of what is here, and some are oblivious," said Baker. "We've had people come from Meadville, 10 miles away, and say, 'We didn't know we had eagles around here.' "
Public awareness is important in a place like Pymatuning (and throughout Pennsylvania) where eagles and humans share habitats.
"We've seen a gradual change in attitudes and the level of knowledge," said Suzanne DeArment, director of the Tamarack Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center in Saegertown. "There are now fewer eagles being shot, but we're seeing more suffering from lead poisoning from ingesting lead shot and lead sinkers picked up with their food. It's getting better, but there are still people who are not aware they are contributing to the problem."
The eco-tours are part of a Pennsylvania state parks initiative to encourage individual parks to provide upscale activities and generate revenue. According to Baker, a secondary objective of the Eagle Eco-Tours is to help local businesses, which rely on tourism, benefit from eagle recovery. When that happens, he said, wildlife takes on greater value in the eyes of the public.
"A lot of tourism-dependent enterprises are looking for ways to spread their business into other parts of the year, outside the summer season," Baker said. "Watching bald eagles appears to be one way to do that, to the extent that it can be balanced with the needs of the resource."
"Eagle-viewing goes well with our philosophy -- relax and enjoy the eagles and our wine," said Gary Shilling, co-owner of Wilhelm Winery, a stop on the eco-tour. "All this kind of fits together -- the bike trails, the lake, and now the eagles. We try to be a good hometown host for all of it."
Wilhelm Winery, Pymatuning and all of Western Pennsylvania have proved to be good hosts to Patti Williams, who moved to Erie two years ago.
"When we moved here from Florida, we missed all the birds we'd see there," Williams said. "It's a revelation to know there are places like this in Pennsylvania. It's one of those things you have to find in order to appreciate."
Armstrong plans to offer the eagle tours again in 2010.
First Published April 5, 2009 12:00 am
