Biden signs bill making bald eagles America’s national bird: NPR

Bald eagles have symbolized America since 1782. However, they are not yet officially declared the national bird.

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The bald eagle has been a symbol of the United States for centuries. His iconography can be found on currency, documents, flags, stamps, government buildings, military uniforms and much more.

But just this week it officially became America’s national bird.

On Christmas Eve, President Biden signed roughly 50 bills into law – including one that changes the U.S. Code to protect the bald eagle (also known as: Haliaeetus leucocephalus) its special status.

The bill passed the Senate in July with bipartisan support and was approved by the House of Representatives last week.

“Today we rightly recognize the bald eagle as our official national bird — an honor that is long overdue,” said Republican Rep. Brad Finstad of Minnesota, who introduced the House version of the bill earlier this year.

Why did recognition take so long and how did it finally become a reality? Americans have a die-hard eagle lover to thank.

How Bald Eagles Became America’s Unofficial Bird

The presidential seal, like the logos of many federal institutions, features a bald eagle.

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Eagles have been used as a symbol of strength since ancient Rome, so it’s no surprise that they have found their way into American iconography as well.

After the founding of the United States in 1776, three different committees tried unsuccessfully to draft an official seal that would satisfy Congress.

Eventually, Charles Thomson, the Secretary of Congress, combined elements from all three proposals into what is now known as the “Great Seal,” with an eagle front and center holding an olive branch and arrows in its talons.

The original proposal featured a small white eagle. Thomson recommended replacing it with a bald eagle, a species native to North America.

Congress adopted the design in 1782, cementing the bald eagle’s status as an American icon.

The popularity of the species has continued to grow since then. In addition to its official appearances, the bald eagle can now be seen on all sorts of patriotic merchandise, serves as a mascot for hundreds of schools, and even flies over major sporting events.

An eagle enthusiast from Minnesota advocated for their recognition

That’s why Preston Cook was shocked when he learned that bald eagles aren’t technically America’s national bird.

Cook, 78, has dedicated much of his life to studying and honoring the species.

“I saw a film called this in 1966 A thousand clownsand there was a line in it: “You can’t have too many eagles,” Cook told MPR News in November. “And that inspired me. So I left the theater thinking, ‘I want to collect eagles.'”

Over the decades, he has amassed more than 40,000 bald eagle items, from pins to paintings to playing cards, a collection currently housed at the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, Minnesota. (He doesn’t play favorites, but counts the eagle buttons he issued on his military uniform in 1966 as among the most meaningful.)

When Cook was researching a book about the birds in 2010, he found that he “could find absolutely nothing that the bald eagle had ever been legally designated as our national bird, nor any presidential proclamation,” as he told NPR All in all this week.

Alarmed, Cook wrote a letter to the late Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. She sent staff to the National Archives who conducted further research and ultimately confirmed his suspicions.

The United States recognizes the rose as its national flower, the oak tree as its national tree, and the bison as its national mammal. But nowhere is a national bird legally established.

Cook is on a mission to change that. After years of lobbying lawmakers, he teamed up with the National Eagle Center last year to draft what he calls “a very simple bill.” But it wasn’t easy to get lawmakers on board, in part because so many bald eagles already held the distinction.

“It was a little challenging at first because they didn’t believe me,” Cook said, adding that Feinstein’s letter was helpful. “So they did their research and came to the same conclusion I did: It’s not our national bird, and we don’t have a national bird.”

Bald eagles are a symbol of resilience in several ways

The bald eagle was in danger of extinction for decades before federal protections led to its recovery. They were removed from the endangered species list in 2007.

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Minnesota Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith were among the bipartisan co-sponsors of the Senate bill, and Minnesota Representatives Brad Finstad and Angie Craig introduced it in the House.

It makes sense that the proposed law was popular in Minnesota, as the state has the second-highest number of bald eagles after Alaska, MPR News reports. As Klobuchar said in a statement, “We know a thing or two about Adler.”

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, an estimated 316,700 bald eagles lived in the lower 48 states in 2020. This number has quadrupled since the last data set a decade ago.

For generations, bald eagles lived peacefully among Native Americans (who consider them sacred) and were abundant in the United States when they were chosen as the star seal in 1782. But their population has declined dangerously at times since then.

According to the National Audubon Society, they were considered an endangered species for many decades, largely due to “human ignorance and persecution through pesticides, careless shooting, collisions with cars and power lines, and loss of habitat for nesting and foraging.”

Congress passed the Bald Eagle Protection Act in 1940, making it illegal to own, kill or sell the birds. But this decade a new threat emerged: the insecticide DDT, which caused eggshells to become thinner and break easily.

By 1963, there were a record low of 417 breeding pairs in the lower 48 areas.

But government protection measures saved the species from extinction.

After the United States banned DDT in 1972 (and Canada the following year), the bald eagle population increased exponentially. In 2007, they were removed from the endangered species list and were officially considered “recovered.”

Ed Hahn, communications director at the National Eagle Center, hopes the bird’s legacy brings lessons for management of other species, whether they are nationally recognized or not

“As we look at some of the issues facing other natural resources today, we can once again look to our living national symbol and now our official national bird,” Hahn told MPR News. “It shows what we can and want to do when we really value something, when it is important to us.”