When saving eagles was unpatriotic

Saving the bald eagle from the brink of extinction is easily one of the most celebrated conservation success stories in American history. But we tend to only hear one side of the story and it’s easy to say we made the right decisions when we have the luxury of success to point to. 

But in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, success wasn’t so certain and the decisions we grappled with weren’t so black-and-white. 

Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, was published in 1962 and is widely touted as the book that set off the “modern environmental movement” and the national effort to better regulate the use of chemicals. Increasingly, the scientific community saw links between widespread chemical use and a host of environmental ills. They concluded, correctly we now know, that the chemical DDT was contributing to the population decline of eagles by weakening their eggshells, reducing reproductive success. 

And thus, the eagle became the symbol of a national effort to ban the chemical. We celebrate the success today and we’ll revel in our wisdom this weekend as we enjoy watching America’s Bird soar over America’s River during Des Moines County Conservation’s Eagle Watch event on Saturday.

But history is written by the victors. 

Rachel Carson, today considered a national hero, was less than popular in the 1960’s. When Silent Spring was published, the chemical and agricultural industries launched a massive effort to discredit her. Very influential and powerful people in both industry and government called her “hysterical,” dubbed her work “amateur, junk science” and one former Secretary of Agriculture publicly wondered why a “spinster” with no children seemed to care so much about future generations. 

This was the height of the Cold War so she also got labeled a “communist” for her “radical” and clearly “unpatriotic” criticism of the very industries that helped America win World War II.

And though the book was a landmark publication that brought ecological awareness to the masses, it didn’t change things overnight. Even after the government’s own Science Advisory Committee’s investigations fully validated her claims, the public and policy makers were slow to react and faced staunch opposition as they began. Proponents of DDT argued that a ban would be a “death sentence” for millions of people prone to insect-borne diseases without the chemical keeping mosquito populations controlled. The agricultural community warned that the entire ag system would collapse leading to mass starvation and total losses of crops and the economies built around them. 

Rachel Carson died in 1964, only 18 months after the book’s publication. But the movement she started was already beginning to soar like the eagles it would eventually save. 

Key word: Eventually. 

Following the book’s publication, it took ten years for us to finally ban DDT in 1972. It took another year to get the Endangered Species Act established. Today, we take for granted that threatened and endangered species are entitled to significant federal protections (although this is still often contentious today). But in Carson’s time, it wasn’t even a thing. 

It took incredible investment and significant regulatory action but since its beginning, the ESA is credited with preventing the extinction of almost 300 species in the United States, the bald eagle being one of them.

But what is the value of an eagle? Or 316,000 of them for that matter, which is today’s population estimate. If eagles ceased to exist, would there be massive ecological collapse? Would our economy feel the hit? If we had just let them disappear fifty years ago, how much different would life be today? 

I’m not sure it would be that much different. 

Eagles are here today because we chose to do something. Actually, we chose to stop doing something – spraying DDT. Yet today, other species are declining faster than ever. We’re facing the largest extinction event the world has ever seen. And many of those species do have major economic value. 

The pollinators that a third of our food production relies on are declining at alarming rates. The bats here in Iowa alone contribute billions of dollars annually to the ag economy by controlling insects that otherwise would affect crops.  Three of those bat species are endangered. 

But pure economics is not what gives something value. With the movement that Carson started, we decided that wild things have intrinsic value. That they’re worth protecting even if you can’t assign a dollar value to them, especially when their decline is a direct result of our actions. 

So as you watch eagles soar over our river this winter, say a silent thanks to the “hysterical, radical, unpatriotic amateurs” that used their “junk science” to advocate for our national bird, and all the other species we now strive to protect. It’s because of them that those eagles exist at all and our springs are, thankfully, not silent.