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Roger Alexander Lowe 17y

Injured bald eagle to be returned to Tenn. wild

A bald eagle found injured earlier this year in a Tennessee pasture is almost ready to call the wild home again.

The adult female, named "Patriot" in honor of the men and women in the armed forces, will take flight Thursday at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Lillydale Campground on Dale Hollow Lake near Livingston, Tenn.

The release comes in the final weeks bald eagles will be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The American Eagle Foundation, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will team up for Patriot's release.

Foundation president Al Cecere said Patriot is very strong after undergoing several months of rehabilitation in the foundation's flight enclosure at Dollywood.

"We have been initially feeding her by hand because she was totally unresponsive," he said.

"We first thought she was blind because she wouldn't get excited when she was approached. We have basically been nursing her back to good health, and she is flying well and responding well to everything around her."

According to Cecere, a farmer named Dolph Neatherly of Alpine, Tenn., found the eagle in his pasture and called the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. Wildlife officer Andy Barlow captured the bird, which had difficulty trying to fly away.

Dr. Mike Jones of the University of Tennessee Veterinary School examined the eagle and found her to have a serious concussion.

Since 1992, the foundation has released about 90 eaglets that have been hatched in captivity, Cecere said.

Over the past 40 years, bald eagles have come back from the brink of extinction. Cecere said more than 7,000 pairs of bald eagles live in the lower 48 states, up from 417 pairs in the 1960s.

Still, eagle experts like Cecere are concerned for the future of the bald eagle after it will be stripped from its Endangered Species Act protection in early 2007.

"The delisting won't hinder the recovery," Cecere said. "It will create more obstacles for the eagle to overcome.

Because the eagle will be protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940, it will have more protection than other species that have been taken off the list."

The delisting ends strictly regulated government-imposed buffer zones around eagle nests on private property throughout the country.

The Endangered Species Act requires that a species be monitored for at least five years after delisting.

(Roger Alexander Lowe writes for the Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee.)

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