Eagles Flourishing, But NBC Worries about Decline

You'd think successfully preserving the bald eagle and helping its population increase would garner a positive news report. You'd be wrong.

NBC "Nightly News" found reason to worry that the bald eagle, which is now flourishing, will be wiped out now that it has been removed from the endangered species list.

“[Nationwide resurgence of the eagle] is not the end of the story. Now the question is will man maintain the eagle’s habitat or will the eagles adapt to man,” said chief environmental affairs correspondent Anne Thompson on June 28.

Quoting biologist Bryan D. Watts, "Nightly News" condemned urban sprawl and compared it to DDT - which was banned in 1972.

“Urban sprawl has become the DDT of our generation,” Watts said. The pesticide DDT was blamed for the decline of the bald eagle population that initially put the bird on the endangered list.

According to a Richmond Times-Dispatch article, Watts doesn't want eagles "to be at the whim of market pressures." The market pressure of coastal real estate development that is.

Private land ownership was hinted at as a problem for the bald eagle during the NBC segment, and the successful cohabitation of bird and man in the city of Philadelphia went unmentioned by Thompson.