AR-News: Bald eagle poisonings bewilder investigators

[jim robertson]

Bald eagle poisonings bewilder investigators
A judge's ruling keeps federal agencies from cooperating to find who is 
killing the birds with tainted sheep meat
Monday, May 10, 2004
MARK LARABEE
For more than a decade, someone has been poisoning bald eagles in the 
mid-Willamette Valley.


Since 1991, 18 bald eagles -- including three this year -- have been found 
dead in a 25-mile radius of Linn, Benton and Lane county farmland. Fifteen 
had the same poison and sheep meat in their bellies.

"It's a fact that somebody is putting out dead sheep and putting this 
pesticide on them to kill bald eagles," said Chris Brong, who heads the U.S. 
Fish and Wildlife Service's law enforcement office in Wilsonville. "I firmly 
believe it's a sheep rancher."

Despite that assertion, wildlife agents have no idea who's doing it. They 
hypothesize that it's someone upset with losing lambs.

Such tensions between ranchers and wildlife have gone on for generations in 
the West. On the Willamette Valley's fertile grasslands, ranchers and 
natural predators such as cougars, bears, coyotes and eagles are in an 
ever-shifting battle over dominion.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/1084190270254120.xml


"Just remember it's the birds that's supposed to suffer, not the hunter." 
—George W. Bush, advising quail hunter and New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, 
Roswell, N.M., Jan. 22, 2004