California has about 200 breeding pairs, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Eagles often live around lakes and bodies of water. The abundance of these habitats in our area has seem the eagle populations in recent years grow. Eagles have been counted at Camanche, Pardee, Don Pedro, New Melones, and Tulloch reservoirs. One breeding pair has been found in the Stanislaus National Forest. The Interior Department has been contemplating what to do about the bald eagle for eight years, since government biologists in 1999 concluded its recovery had been a success. Earlier this year, a federal court directed Interior to make a decision on the bird's status by last Friday, acting on a lawsuit filed by a Minnesota man who complained the government's delays kept him from developing seven acres that included an eagle's nest. 

With a wing span that can extend more than seven feet, and powerful talons that allow it to swoop down and grab its prey, the bald eagle was long viewed by many as a scavenger, nuisance and dangerous predator. It was hunted for its feathers, shot from airplanes, the subject of a 50-cent bounty in Alaska, poisoned in some states and fed to hogs in others. Congress passed a law in 1940, still on the books, that made killing a bald eagle illegal.  But the bird's decline accelerated, thanks to DDT, the insecticide that began to be widely used in the 1940s to control mosquitoes. DDT seeped into lakes and streams and into fish, the eagle's favorite food, harming adult birds and their eggs.  When DDT was banned in 1972, the eagle's recovery slowly began. Although the bird is no longer on the endangered species list, it will still be protected under two federal laws. The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act both prohibit harming or selling the eagles, their nests or eggs.