LONGVIEW — It takes specific parameters and a long permitting process to cut down a tree with an active eagle nest in it, and that’s what Finch Drive LLC did on Finch Drive in Longview. However, neighbors who have watched the pair of eagles nest there for at least a decade said they wish there had been another way.
Kristy Neubo, who owns the apartment buildings adjacent to the property where the eagle’s nest was, said she’s an animal person and “even if a permit was issued it doesn’t make it right.”
“The world’s not ours, we share it with animals,” she said, adding that now the neighborhood will no longer be able to watch the eagle eggs hatch each spring and “it’s awful that somebody cut down their home.”
Bryce Clary, owner of the Bud Clary Auto Group and Finch Drive LLC, said the company “has worked with the City of Longview and USFWS, and has obtained the necessary permits to remove an unsafe tree from the property around Finch Drive in West Longview.”
“Our No. 1 priority was and is the safety of the environment on and around the property,” he wrote in an email Wednesday. “We worked with a professional consultant, and the USFWS, step by step, over the past 6+ months to follow the proper channels.”
Longview Director of Community Development Ann Rivers clarified that while the city was not included in any part of the permitting process, when upset neighbors reached out about the eagle tree, she contacted the developer.
She said the permitting process seemed to be “quite long and expensive” and that a study of the eagle pair found about three years earlier, their original tree had fallen into the slough, so the eagles relocated to a different tree. Rivers said the eagles have relocated again to a new tree nearby.
The permitting process
There are only four situations where an active eagle’s nest can be removed, and removal requires mitigation, according to Matt Stuber, U.S. Fish and Wildlife regional eagle coordinator.
The first is a safety emergency to humans or eagles, which he said is rare. The next is a human health and safety issue that is not an emergency, but long-term could be a danger. A third reason is if the nest is interfering with the intended us of a manmade structure, typically if a nest is built on a cell tower. The final situation is if the activity that is being conducted or mitigated for brings a net benefit to eagles.
“Those are the only four issues under which we can permit nest removal,” Stuber said. Only a handful of permits are issued every year, and almost always for bald eagles. The most common situation permits are issued for is human health and safety issues, he said.
“The service tries really hard to make sure that when people do mitigate for take we authorize, that we know it’s going to save the number of eagles we authorized take of,” he said, so the number of eagles mitigation will help is the same or greater than the number affected by taking a nest down.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife doesn’t view the nest permits as a regulatory process as much as one more tool of conservation, Stuber said. The permits are designed to be mutually beneficial: they allow people to do activities that would otherwise be prohibited, and the eagle species as a whole benefits from larger mitigation actions.
“Eagles get more, they get some kind of conservation on the ground,” he said, more than simply relocating a nest. Moving a nest would be more of rectification, Stuber said, not the broader mitigation and conversation the agency asks permittees to do.
For example, retrofitting power poles that are a high risk to eagles to reduce eagle death is a very common mitigation action, Stuber said.
He said he could not comment on specific permits or mitigation actions, but to get a permit anyone applying would need to meet the same strict situation guidelines.
Effect on eagles
When a nest is removed, eagles typically will move on and build another nest, Stuber said.
“It’s hard to say exactly when, but bald eagles are pretty resilient and will likely find another place to build a new nest and are able to be successful and productive at another location,” Stuber said.
Any nest removal has to happen outside of the breeding season, which is legally Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, to ensure no eggs or eaglets are harmed.
The only exception is for the emergency situations, but Stuber said those are very rare and the department has specific protocols to follow to make sure no young are harmed if they are in the nest.
Community reaction
For the community members who enjoyed watching the eagles raise their young outside their windows, the loss is a hard one. Landlord Neubo said when crews arrived to cut down the tree, the entire neighborhood turned out in concern.
“These eagles, everybody in the neighborhood had watched them and watched their babies,” she said. “They didn’t need to destroy the trees. They could have developed around them.”
Clary said the tree was unsafe, which was the basis for removal.
Neubo said she tried to buy the land when it first went up for sale years ago, to use it as a natural area, and that she’s asked to see the permit for removal. She said she’s worried the eagles will leave the area to make a new nest.
“It’s tough, a tough situation but what’s done is done and I don’t know what we can do,” she said.
People can get very protective of eagles, U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Stuber said, and “there are a lot of people out there that love having eagles around, that love being able to go and look at a nest and see young grow up.”
“For many people it’s a really important thing,” he said. “We know there’s a lot of people watching eagles out there and excited about eagles out there. We like that. That’s a good thing. So it’s not surprising that there’s some attention brought to these instances when there’s a nest removed on occasion.”
Stuber said the agency takes a big-picture view of eagle conservation, and the permits mean the removal can be done with minimal disruption to the birds and with a net positive for eagle conservation, even if a specific nest is removed or one eagle pair moves areas.
“That’s a win-win, and even the service wins when we issue permits because we require monitoring with these permits, so we get to learn,” he said.
