February 2005
Writers on the Range
Gary Wockner
The woman dubbed "eagle lady" grabbed a chunk of fish
and threw it out on the sand in front of her trailer. Fifteen bald eagles
immediately jumped off their perches and flew into a scuffle for the
meat.
A large, younger eagle, its feathers still gray-brown and mottled,
emerged with the prize clamped in its talons. It hopped to the edge
of the flock and flapped into the air. As its feet lifted off the ground,
its talons tucked the fish up and under its tail feathers and it flew
out across the water, heading for the Alaska’s Kachemak Bay State
Wilderness Park.
It was a beautiful scene there in Homer, as my family sat in our car
and watched from 20 feet away. We’d traveled to Alaska over the
Christmas holiday to visit friends and see the arctic winter. Bald eagles
swooped and squawked in the air and danced and strutted on the ground,
and sometimes their six-foot wingspans filled the view from our windshield.
My two young daughters were awed and mesmerized.
The "eagle lady," as she has become known, has been feeding
eagles for 30 years, and has thereby garnered relentless attention from
the media and professional photographers. On the few days we watched,
about 100 bald eagles showed up, along with a handful of people in automobiles,
a few with cameras supporting long, professional lenses.
It is estimated that 80 percent of all commercial eagle photos seen
in the United States are taken right here in Homer. We are nature-starved,
and these images feed us. But what we saw is also controversial.
The Anchorage Audubon Society recently requested that Homer outlaw
eagle-feeding, and the local Kachemak Bay Conservation Society continues
to debate the issue. Conservation groups, as do wildlife ecologists,
usually believe it is unethical and harmful to make food available to
wildlife. Feeding wildlife -- making beggars of them -- often attracts
animals like bears or mountain lions, and they may end up dead because
of it.
As a conservationist and working ecologist in Colorado, I should side
with my colleagues who are adamantly against feeding eagles and other
wildlife. But, I’ve begun to notice other sides to the issue.
What I mostly see nowadays are children --like mine -- confined all
day in brick, sterile school buildings with little exposure to the natural
world. I see their parents --like me-- similarly holed up in dry, monotonous
office buildings. I see our homes and strip-malls marching across the
landscape devouring tens-of-thousands of acres of wildlife habitat every
year. So is it any wonder that policymakers take anti-environmental
stances, while the decoupling of nature to human culture is evermore
entrenched?
In Homer, and all around the Kenai Peninsula, there’s a treasure
trove of opportunities for seeing wild animals doing what comes naturally
and an economy that supports it. Whales, bears, salmon, wolves, moose,
otters, and sea lions roam amid the glaciers, mountain peaks, raging
rivers and ocean. In much of Alaska, nature in the raw is the headline
act on the main stage.
As we watched the bald eagle feeding, another adult eagle snatched
a hunk of meat and flew to a post three feet away from my open car window.
The huge bird ripped and tore at the fish with its beak and claws, bits
of meat and blood flying through the air. As it periodically looked
at me in the car, its eyes perfectly dispassionate and intensely piercing,
I squeezed backwards in my seat and wondered aloud if I should roll
up the window.
For I, too, am meat, and what an incredible feeling that was.
I don’t advocate feeding wildlife in any situation where it may
be dangerous for people or for the wild creatures we want to survive,
but I believe we need to think more creatively, and give the public
more watchable wildlife opportunities that let all of us be awed and
mesmerized.
The signs at the eagle lady’s said, "Eagle Feeding Station.
Please Stay in Your Car." I see it differently, more like "Drive-up
nature. Next summer’s blockbuster hit. Coming to a parking lot
near you."
Gary Wockner is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News (hcn.org). He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.
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