The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in the April 9, 2001, Federal Register its receipt of an application for an incidental take permit associated with a Habitat Conservation Plan for the American bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), a species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Pinsto, Inc., a Gaston County, North Carolina, development company, has requested the incidental take permit in order to complete construction of a 13-acre subdivision where a new bald eagle nest was discovered in December 2000. The company had initiated construction of the final phase of an existing residential subdivision in November, but this construction was temporarily halted when a pair of eagles began constructing a nest in the subdivision within 200 feet of existing homes.
As many as 75,000 pairs of nesting bald eagles may have lived in the lower 48 United States when the bird was adopted as our national symbol in 1782. It was a common nesting species along the coast of the Southeast as well as along major rivers and lakes. Its population diminished rapidly, however, due to habitat destruction, nest disturbance, illegal shooting, and most notably, the contamination of its food sources by the pesticide DDT. By the 1960s, nesting populations were reduced to less than 2 percent of their former numbers, and the bald eagle below the 40th parallel was listed as endangered in 1967.
Due to efforts to protect the bald eagle and its habitat, reintroduce eagles into suitable habitat, and ban the use of DDT, bald eagle populations have expanded rapidly in recent years, prompting the Service to propose removing the species from the list of threatened and endangered species. However, many of these eagles are choosing to build nests in developed areas or areas slated for development.
"This pair of bald eagles seems accustomed to the normal residential activities around the site they have selected to build a nest," said Mark Cantrell, a biologist in the Service
