While bald eagles around the nation have rebounded vigorously to the banning of DDT, the Catalina population is still beset by that offshore dump, which works it way up the food chain to the fish and other food that the eagles eat. The pesticide causes the female eagles to lay weak, thin-shelled eggs that typically could not withstand the incubation process. In recent years, wildlife biologists have gone into the five nests on the island, removed freshly laid eggs, and replaced them with faux eggs until about the time that the chicks should be hatching.
At that time the biologists replace the props with freshly hatched eagle chicks, and no one’s the wiser. Prompted by evidence of declining levels of DDT in the eagles, the wildlife biologist this year left the real eggs in one nest, and found this past weekend that they had successfully hatched.
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