The recovery of the bald eagle is one of the most important wildlife conservation success stories of the United States. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s goal is to ensure that regulations for eagle permits are consistent with the goal of maintaining stable or increasing breeding populations for both bald eagles and golden eagles.
The Service and the regulated community share an interest in introducing more efficiency and effectiveness into the eagle incidental take permitting process, facilitating and improving compliance while increasing the conservation benefit for eagles.
The Service published a proposed rule and draft environmental assessment with approaches to improve the eagle incidental take permitting program. This will improve the conservation of both bald eagles and golden eagles by providing incentives for more projects to be in compliance with the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and implement mitigation measures.
The proposed rule published in the Federal Register on September 30, 2022 and the public comment period closed on December 29, 2022.