A record year for eagles on the James| March 7, 2011 The bald
eagle breeding population along the James River has set a new
record, with 165 breeding pairs of the birds documented in early
March. That number, likely to increase, has surpassed the 154
breeding pairs spotted last year on the James River. The figures
were recently announced by Bryan Watts, director of the Center
for Conservation Biology. The center conducts an annual series
of low-altitude flights in a small plane to spot nests of the
birds. For the past half century, the Center has documented the
bald eagle’s return to the James River and Virginia’s portion of
the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. The James is the only
major tributary within the Chesapeake Bay watershed in which the
bald eagle population was completely lost, Watts said. “The
historic river supported no breeding pairs in the late 1970s,
due to high levels of kepone, DDT and other pollutants,” Watts
said. “For the population to recover to this level in just 30
years is a testam