Last October, a three-year-old bald eagle hunting prey on a stretch of farmland near Greenville, Monroe County, allegedly flew into the tall chain-link fence of a game farm, became entangled and struggled to break free, breaking a wing in the process.
Game farm employees found the injured bird and West Virginia Natural Resources Police Officer JC Wheeler was notified of its whereabouts.
After driving to the scene and carefully transporting the eagle to his vehicle, Wheeler drove the injured bird to the Three Rivers Avian Center in Brooks, Summers County, about 25 miles away.
“When I first saw the extent of the eagle’s injuries – the broken bone and all that lacerated tissue – I had no idea if he would pull through,” said Wendy Perrone, executive director of Three Rivers. Analysis of a blood sample from the bird did nothing to elucidate this prognosis.
“There was enough lead in his system to make him very sick,” Perrone said.
While Perrone hoped the eagle’s wing could be saved and enough lead could be removed from its bloodstream to no longer endanger its health, she doubted the bird would ever fly again.
But recently, at Bluestone Lake, the eagle, named Monroe IV by followers of the Three Rivers Facebook page, demonstrated how far it has come since October.
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A moment after Wheeler opened the door to his cage, Monroe IV made its way into the sky as a small crowd of onlookers watched and cheered. The eagle took a low flight across a section of the lake, then angled gracefully north, disappearing behind a densely forested slope rising from the shore.
“Here he will have plenty to eat and plenty of friends to hang out with,” Perrone said. “He hasn’t established a territory yet, so he’ll have time to jazz it up and see where he wants to be.”
Perrone said it was fortunate the eagle was spotted shortly after being injured Oct. 23 and Wheeler quickly brought the bird to the Three Rivers Avian Center. Another key to the bird’s recovery was a successful two-hour operation two days later at Good Shepherd Animal Hospital in Charleston, during which veterinarian Sarah Stephenson implanted a pin in the broken wing bone. right of the eagle to repair the fracture and suture the torn tissues.
After the pin was removed in early December, rehabilitation work began in the flight barn at the avian center. In January, the eagle would perform tricks in the bird center’s enclosed circular flyway to develop wing muscle strength.
During this time, the eagle received a series of calcium disodium EDTA injections to successfully treat his lead poisoning.
A West Virginia avian rehabilitation center has helped a bald eagle regain flight after being grounded for weeks.
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“We see so many cases of lead toxicity these days,” Perrone said, especially in raptors like hawks and eagles and scavengers like red-headed vultures and black vultures.
Accumulations of used lead ammunition across the landscape are thought to be the main source of lead poisoning. The heavy metal can be ingested by birds that feed on the piles of deer and other large game species killed by hunters, or the carcasses of game injured by gunshots that later die but are not found , by hunters.
When a lead bullet hits an animal, it doesn’t just lodge in one place or pass through the body. In many cases, it fragments into several pieces, sometimes numbering in the hundreds. Some of these fragments traveled more than a foot from the bullet’s original path.
A 2015 study by wildlife researchers from West Virginia University, Virginia Tech, Michigan State, and the US Forest Service found that lead permeates the landscape of the eastern United States. United to a previously unrecognized degree. Bone samples taken from the 106 black vultures and red-headed vultures involved in the study showed lead levels indicative of long-term exposure.
Once in a raptor’s system, lead affects nerve function and interrupts neurotransmission, causing the bird to lose coordination. In high concentrations, lead can paralyze birds as their muscles break down.
“A lot of these birds are flying drunk these days,” Perrone said.
Hunters switching to lead-free ammunition, such as copper bullets and steel shotgun pellets, would go a long way to reducing lead toxicity in eagles and other birds of prey, Perrone said.
“We took lead out of gasoline and it made a huge difference to public health,” she said. “Now that lead-free ammunition prices have come down and are competitive with lead ammunition, perhaps more hunters will make the switch.”
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Since the early 1980s, when the state’s first known bald eagle nest was documented in a remote canyon on the South Fork of the Potomac River near the Hardy-Hampshire county line, the population of eagles of the state has grown steadily.
In the Greenbrier and New River watersheds of southern West Virginia, volunteers have conducted winter surveys of eagles on a January day for each of the past 18 years. During the 2023 survey, volunteers spotted 79 bald eagles.
While eagle sightings were relatively rare 20 years ago, there are now more than 200 pairs of eagles nesting in the state along nearly every major waterway.
“You’re in eagle country now,” Perrone said.
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