John K. Flores: Bald eagle's increasing numbers are reason to celebrate

Early in the spring of 2023, I received a call from Patterson local Clark Givens. Givens is an avid bicycler and at the time of his call he and his bike club members were on a road trip to Burns Point.
The reason for his call was to let me know he had passed by a dead bald eagle lying on the side of the road and wanted to know what to do. As the local outdoor writer, I get these calls regularly.
Calls typically go something like, “Mr. John, when does the primitive weapon season open in Deer Hunting Area 7?” or, “I caught a stingray that might place second or third in the state record book. How do I go about getting it registered?”
My all-time favorite calls came annually from the late Frank Guarisco, who was a board member for the Evangeline Area Boy Scout Council.
Frank was one of the organizers for the annual Boy Scout steak dinner fund raiser that took place in December.
It never failed, Frank would call and say, “Hey John, when does the first split of duck season end this year and the second split start?”
Frank always wanted to make his reservation well in advance to secure the banquet hall before all the Christmas party folks did. Additionally, he once told me the attendance was better between the splits when the duck season was closed.
Getting back to Givens’ dead bald eagle, I suggested he call the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and report it, which he subsequently did.
Several days later, Givens called me again. On his next bike ride, he noticed the bird was still there. This time I called one of our local LDWF Enforcement Agents, Lt. Scott Dupre.
Dupre let me know the department knew about it and said there was a federal wildlife organization who would be out to collect the eagle.
It is unlawful for citizens to possess a dead eagle or any of its feathers or body parts. Eagle remains typically go to the National Eagle Repository, National Wildlife Center, or other Federal institution, where they are processed and eventually go to native American tribes for use in religious ceremonies.
This past week, Hunter Marcel, an outdoor content creator, producer, videographer and nature photographer from Bayou Blue, decided to check his kids out of school early to go on a boat ride. They were about to have a short week with Mardi Gras coming up, so Marcel thought, why not?
While running along the Hollywood Canal that runs parallel with Bayou Blue Road in Houma, they noticed something floundering in the water along the bank. Initially the crew thought it was a fish. When they got close enough to see, it turned out to be a bald eagle caught in a fishing line.
Marcel says the eagle happened to be in an area where they pass regularly and have seen a pair there for perhaps 10 years.
Marcel called the proper enforcement authorities to make sure he was able to handle and rescue the eagle before it drowned or died from exhaustion. The authorities gave him instructions to untangle the bird and let it dry out, then followed up by saying try and see if it can be released unharmed. If not, then to call the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine’s emergency department.
Unfortunately, the bird was too exhausted to fly, so the Marcel family made the 1-1/2-hour drive to LSU in Baton Rouge.
After examination by hospital staff, they determined the bird looked fine, but needed fluids to rehydrate and time to recover. Thank goodness Marcel and his family came by when they did.
The crux of this article is there was a time in the not-so-distant past, when few bald eagles were seen around these parts, and pretty much all of Louisiana, for that matter. Moreover, there were scarcely any human-eagle encounters except perhaps those that were related to the energy industry that required strict work arounds before they could operate near an eagle’s nest.
Since delisting and removal from the list of threatened and endangered species in June 2007, the bald eagle has rebounded to the point where we celebrate them here in Morgan City with the Annual Eagle Expo.
Perhaps more importantly, they are now part of our everyday lives. We see them soaring in the sky on the way to work. We see them perched along the highways and waterways. We see them at the land fill in Berwick. We see them while hunting and fishing. We see them everywhere, it seems.
True, some of these encounters are unfortunate, where bald eagles become a casualty of an accident or human negligence. The good news is their numbers are such today where an occasional mortality won’t disrupt the progress that has been made.
So why not celebrate what we’ve accomplished here along the upper Gulf Coast? There’s no better way than by registering for Eagle Expo 2024 that runs Feb. 22-24 in Morgan City.
Thursday evening features the popular “Wings to Soar” presentation at 6:30 p.m. at the Patterson Area Civic Center. This event is free to the public.
Friday evening will consist of a sunset social and dinner at Bay City Bistro. Speakers talking about birds include Delaina LeBlanc, a biologist with Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, author Mary Beth Lima, and Jane Patterson, President and Education Coordinator of the Baton Rouge Audubon Society.
There’s also plenty of tours you can sign up for, where you’ll see plenty of eagles in the beautiful settings of our Atchafalaya Basin.
With a growing bald eagle population, there no doubt will be more human-eagle interactions that probably won’t go well for the eagles. But, as long as these encounters are kept rare and infrequent, we should be able to continue celebrating these majestic birds for generations to come.
John Flores is the Morgan City Review’s outdoor writer. He can be contacted at gowiththeflo@cox.net.