Eagles number more than 100 in Pa.

Last week's Endeavor News carried a front-page photo of a bald eagle spotted near Sweden Valley in Potter County.

John Eastlake took the picture on a trip through the region to research Pa. Conservation Corps camps and mentioned that he saw a second eagle that same day near Tionesta.

Eastlake's good fortune raised questions about how many eagles are living in Pennsylvania. The Pa. Game Commission has some answers.

Last year, the agency's employees recorded for the first time more than 100 bald eagle nests within Pennsylvania's borders.

The Game Commission started Pennsylvania's sevenyear bald eagle reintroduction program in 1983, when three nesting pairs remained in the Commonwealth. The agency sent employees to Saskatchewan to obtain 12 eaglets from wilderness nests in the first year.

With financial assistance from the Richard King Mellon Foundation and the federal Endangered Species Fund, the project spurred the release of 88 Canadian bald eagles into the wilds of Pennsylvania at Haldeman Island in Dauphin County and Shohola Falls in Pike County.

The bald eagle is listed as a "threatened species" by the federal government and Pennsylvania. Bald eagles were upgraded from endangered to threatened nationally in 1995, and the Game Commission upgraded them in 2005.

Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering removing the bald eagle from federal threatened species list. However, bald eagles still would be protected by the Bald Eagle Protection Act and other federal and state laws.