Perhaps in a bit of news that bodes well for Philadelphia's favorite football team, the population of bald eagles all across New Jersey has risen, with 250 active nests discovered over the course of the past year.
According to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, this growth means that there are nearly 30 more active nests across the state than there were last year.
“The continued growth of New Jersey’s bald eagle population is an inspiration to all of us and is a direct result of strong environmental protection laws, firm partnerships, innovative scientific techniques – and the dedication of many volunteers who devote much of their time to monitoring and protecting eagles,” NJDEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette said in a statement.
The state department of environmental protection noted that the 250 active nests confirmed in 2022 represent a more than two-fold increase over the 10-year period beginning in 2013, when 119 active nests were counted.
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Most of these nests, the NJDEP pointed out, are located in the Delaware Bay region with roughly half of all nests located in Cumberland and Salem counties and the bayside of Cape May County in South Jersey.
The return of the bald eagle population has been steady for decades, said the NJDEP. In the 1970s and 1980s, the state had just one pair of the birds in a remote part of Cumberland County.
The NJDEP said that this was because the synthetic insecticide, DDT, had "lasting impacts on the food chain, accumulating in fish that eagles eat and causing eagles to lay thin-shelled eggs that could not withstand incubation."
Green
Recovery efforts, the NJDEP noted, began in the early 1980s, with reintroduction of eagles from Canada and artificial incubation and fostering efforts that started a resurgence of the bald eagle population throughout the 1990s.
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