Eagle Expo returns Feb. 22-24

The Cajun Coast’s Eagle Expo will be back in 2024 after a one-year hiatus, fittingly enough for an event that celebrates the bald eagle’s comeback from near-extinction.
The 2024 Eagle Expo will be Feb. 22-24, headquartered in Morgan City.
The popular features will be back this year, including walks and boat rides through prime eagle habitat.
The events start at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 22, with a free Wings to Soar presentation at the Patterson Area Civic Center, 116 Cotten Road.
Jon and Dale Stokes of Wings to Soar have worked with birds of prey for a combined 60 years, and they’ll bring a variety of live raptors to the presentation: a falcon, a hawk, an owl, a black vulture and a bald eagle among them.
The presentation will be sponsored by the Barataria Terrebonne National Estuary Program. Arrive at least 15 minutes before the program’s start.
The boat tours to view the American bald eagle begin Friday.
On the schedule are an Atchafalaya Basin Tour with Capt. John Burke (Captain Caviar) and Bayou Long with Capt. Ivy St. Romain.
The Eagle Expo also offers walking tours to the Bayou Teche National Wildlife Refuge and a photography tour with Capt. Billy in Bayou Black.
You’ll have a chance to view eagles as well as anhinga, peregrine falcons, various hawk and duck species, wading birds, some songbirds, blue herons, snowy egrets, great egrets, white ibises, belted kingfishers, red-tailed hawks, double-crested cormorants, American white pelicans, red-shouldered hawks, yellow-rumped warblers, Carolina chickadees, and various species of terns and gulls.
On Friday evening, a sunset social and dinner are planned at Bay City Bistro.
Shirts are also available for purchase.
A program of three speakers begins at 8 a.m. Saturday at Clarion Inn/Quality Inn, 502 Roderick St., Morgan City.
The speakers:
—Delaina LeBlanc of the Barataria Terrebonne National Estuary Program, “Are Limpkins Becoming an Invasive Species?”
—Mary Beth Lima, a playground designer and avid birder, “Are You Having A Good Year?”
—Jane Patterson of Baton Rouge, “Birds of the Atchafalaya.”
To register for the Eagle Expo, go to http://tinyurl.com/3p68r8en.
Registration has been light so far, Cajun Coast Executive Director Carrie Stansbury said Wednesday.
But she said Eagle Expo-goers often sign up closer to the event to see what the weather will be like, and Cajun Coast has been advertising the event.
The boat tours in particular fill up quickly.
The event coincides with the time of year when bald eagles make their way from the north to the Gulf Coast to nest. It also highlights the Atchafalaya’s role in the comeback of America’s national symbol.
In 1782, when the bald eagle was chosen to represent the United States, anecdotal accounts indicated that there may have been 100,000 nesting bald eagles, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
But hunting and loss of habitat reduced their numbers until, in 1940, Congress passed the Bald Eagle Protection Act to save the dwindling population from extinction.
Then, after World War II, DDT came into wide use as a mosquito-killer. But the insecticide entered the food chain, and it threatened eagles and other bird species by making many of their egg shells too thin to survive incubation.
At one point in the 1960s, only 417 nesting pairs were known to exist.
But one of the founding documents of the environmental movement, Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” called attention to the dangers of DDT. The insecticide was banned in 1972.
The ban, plus aggressive conservation measures and captive breeding programs, slowly began to bring the bald eagle back.
By 1995, federal authorities upgraded the bald eagle’s status from “endangered” to “threatened.” In 2007, the bald eagle was removed from any classification in the Endangered Species Act.
At least 350 nesting pairs have been counted in Louisiana, and the Atchafalaya River and Bayou Teche zones are among the areas where bald eagles are most plentiful.