West Lebanon
Federal wildlife officials have been tasked with capturing the bird so that it can have a chance at being rehabilitated, but no sightings have been reported for five days.
“We hate to see any animal in distress, and bald eagles are the national emblem,” said David Allaben, state director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s New Hampshire Wildlife Division. “We’re still looking for it.”
Allaben noted the species has enjoyed federal protection under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act since 1940. The leg trap — which seems to be the kind typically used to trap small mammals — appears to have been dangling from one of the eagle’s toes for weeks.
“It’s definitely causing the bird struggles in obtaining food,” Allaben said.
Area bird conservationists believe the eagle is a juvenile from a family that nests in Plainfield.
Marc Morgan, solid waste manager for the city-owned landfill on Route 12A, said a staff member first noticed the bird about three weeks ago, and reported it to an on-site worker from Allaben’s office.
“It’s really completely out of our hands,” Morgan said, noting that the special protections afforded the eagle heavily regulate the means by which it can be captured.
The USDA has a presence at the landfill because of a contract under which the USDA controls the local bird population, which would otherwise spread trash and endanger planes from the nearby Lebanon Municipal Airport.
Federal wildlife workers made an unsuccessful attempt to capture the eagle using a remote-controlled bownet.
Bownets consist of a flat circular frame that snaps shut like a giant leg trap, capturing an unsuspecting bird in its netting.
Catherine Greenleaf, a wildlife rehabilitator with the St. Francis Wild Bird Hospital in Lyme, said birdwatchers in the area believe that the eagle in distress is part of a family that they’ve observed near the McNamara Dairy.
In May, Greenleaf responded to a call to come collect the eagle’s brother, which had jumped out of its nest prematurely and could not fly.
“The eaglet was crossing the street and was nearly hit by a car several times,” she said. After capturing and banding the bird, she turned it over to officers from the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, who successfully released it back into the wild.
Now that the other eagle also has come to the attention of authorities, Greenleaf said, she’s referring to the sibling pair as “Double Trouble.”
“I have had many birds come in with leg-hold trap injuries, but never with the leg hold still attached,” she said. “The prognosis is guarded for any bird in this situation.”
“It’s not unprecedented,” said Lauren Adams, the lead wildlife keeper at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, a nonprofit avian rehabilitation organization in Quechee.
Adams said 2014 was the last time that VINS treated and released a bald eagle with injuries that were believed to be sustained in a leg trap. This year, it received a record-high four eagles, and successfully released three of them into the wild.
She said it’s impossible to know for sure what this particular eagle is going through, but she made some educated guesses.
Though it seems unlikely that the eagle could hunt for fish with the trap dangling from its foot, the fact that it survived for at least two weeks shows that it was probably finding some source of food, she said.
“About 30 percent of their diet is carrion,” she said.
Another factor working in the bird’s favor is the site of the trap — Adams said an eagle’s foot, which is in harm’s way every time the eagle attempts to grasp prey, is the toughest part of its body.
“They tend to be able to withstand a lot of damage,” she said.
But that’s where the good news stops. Adams said there also are several factors working against the eagle. If it did indeed hatch this year, it’s probably only been on its own for a matter of weeks.
“During the hatch years, they’re practicing their flying, their hunting, those behaviors,” she said. “There’s a pretty high mortality rate for first-years. It’s more likely to succumb to injuries.”
There’s also the possibility that it’s suffering a slow death on a restricted diet, or that it has an infection that will slowly spread throughout its leg, causing pain or paralysis and, eventually, death.
“It’s sort of a race against time,” Adams said. “But unfortunately you have to wait to catch it.”
Brenna Galdenzi, president of the Stowe, Vt.-based Protect Our Wildlife group, said the eagle’s plight underscores the brutality of leg-hold traps.
“Traps are inherently indiscriminate by nature,” she said. “They catch owls and eagles and endangered species every year.”
During 2015 and 2016, Galdenzi said, Vermont received more than 20 reports of untargeted animals being injured or killed by leg traps, including dogs, cats and a bobcat. In the Upper Valley, a cat and a raven were reported in Sharon, and a red squirrel was reported in Strafford.
The group is lobbying state legislators to pass H. 262, a law that would create more oversight of those who use leg traps as a means of wildlife control on their own property.
“It’s just such a farce,” Galdenzi said. “There are a lot of nonlethal, sustainable options.”
New Hampshire Fish and Game supports trapping, which it says helps to reduce human-animal conflicts and provides information “to wildlife population managers (that) is essential for effective management recommendations.”
The state issues permits for trapping on the Lebanon Wildlife Management Area, a 24-acre piece of land that lies between Route 12A and the Connecticut River, running from Old County Road to Trues Brook Road, which lies less than a half-mile from the landfill over which the eagle was seen.
Trapping permits are not currently available for the Wildlife Management Area, but permits that were issued in 2016 are still valid.
During the 2015-16 season, more than 650 trapping licenses resulted in the taking of about 5,500 animals statewide.
The large majority were beaver and muskrats, but that number also included coyotes, fishers, minks, otters, raccoons and foxes.
The New Hampshire Audubon Society has seen increasing numbers of birds during an annual midwinter count that has shown record numbers of about 90 eagles over the past two years, up dramatically from the fewer than 30 it counted during the 1990s.
Allaben asks that anyone who sees the eagle frequenting an area call his office at 603-223-6832.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.