The bald eagle's soaring comeback: From near extinction to official US bird
The bald eagle, with its history as the symbol of the nation going back over 200 years, made a roaring comeback from near extinction to becoming America's official bird this week.
President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill Tuesday that designated the bald eagle as the national bird. Despite appearing on the Great Seal of the U.S. since 1782, the bald eagle has never legally been recognized as the national bird until now.
With its distinctive brown body, white head and yellow beak, the bald eagle grasps an olive branch and arrows in its talons on the seal, which is used on official documents, military uniform buttons and every U.S. passport.
Though it's the "most pictured bird in all of America," according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the bald eagle has had to overcome threats to its very existence.
How did the bald eagle become a national symbol?
The bald eagle first emerged as a national symbol when it appeared on an early Massachusetts copper cent in 1776, the VA said in a publication on the bird.
After the Declaration of Independence was adopted that year on July 4, a committee was formed to design a seal for the new nation. It took six years and three committees before the seal that we know today was decided on. Secretary of the Continental Congress Charles Thomson made the design, which was adopted on June 20, 1782.
"The olive branch and the arrows held in the eagle’s talons denote the power of peace and war. The eagle always casts its gaze toward the olive branch signifying that our nation desires to pursue peace but stands ready to defend itself," the National Museum of American Diplomacy says.
"The fierce beauty and proud independence of this great bird aptly symbolizes the strength and freedom of America," John F. Kennedy once wrote of the bald eagle.
On the brink of extinction
In the mid-1900s, the bald eagle's existence was threatened by a combination of habitat destruction, illegal shooting and insecticides contaminating the bird's food source, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Some bald eagles were shot because they were seen as a risk to chickens and livestock.
It's believed that there were about 100,000 nesting bald eagles in the U.S. when it was first adopted as the American symbol. The decline started in the 1800s, along with a decline in the populations of other species of birds, the Wildlife Service said.
In 1963, there were only 417 known nesting pairs of bald eagles, putting the species in danger of extinction. After the Endangered Species Act of 1973 was signed, bald eagles in the contiguous 48 states were listed as endangered except in Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin, where they were listed as threatened.
The bald eagle's comeback
Congress moved to protect bald eagles in 1940 with the Bald Eagle Protection Act, which was later amended to include golden eagles. Its later addition to the list of endangered species also led to conservation and recovery efforts, the Wildlife Service said.
By 1998, the bald eagle had recovered enough that its status was changed to threatened. In 2007, officials said there were over 9,000 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the contiguous states − and the birds were removed from the list altogether.
As of estimates in 2018 and 2019, there are now about 316,700 bald eagles, including 71,467 breeding pairs, in the lower 48 states.
"The bald eagle is an Endangered Species Act success story," the wildlife service said.
Bald eagles are still protected by federal law, and it is illegal to kill, sell, or harm them. They are also under threat from bird flu, which researchers have found is killing them at an "alarming rate."
Did Ben Franklin really want the turkey as America's bird?
A popular legend says that Benjamin Franklin advocated for the turkey to be the national bird instead of the bald eagle.
This is not the whole story, according to the Franklin Institute. Franklin did criticize the eagle and praise the turkey in a letter to his daughter, but he never proposed that the turkey become the national bird, the institute said.
"For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. ... For in Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America," he wrote in the letter, according to Harvard University's Declaration Resources Project.
Given the context, the letter is actually part of a joke in which Franklin disapproved of the Society of the Cincinnati's seal, which also adopted an eagle after the Great Seal. Some said the society's seal looked more like a turkey, wrote Emily Sneff with the Declaration Resources Project.
Franklin was, however, one of three founders originally tasked with designing the nation's seal after the signing of the Declaration. One of Franklin's suggestions was recounted by John Adams in a letter to his wife: "Moses lifting up his wand, and dividing the Red Sea, and Pharoah, in his chariot overwhelmed with the waters,” along with the motto, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
(This story was updated because an earlier version included an inaccuracy.)