Alaska's cities
Enough eagles in Homer?
Some say feeding debases and endangers a proud bird
By Tom Kizzia / Anchorage Daily News
Homer -- The furor started with a report last January of an attack on a dog out for a neighborhood walk on a leash. A lurking eagle swooped down and sunk its talons into the Labrador's haunch while the owner hit the pavement screaming.
Federal and state biologists who interviewed the dog owner after she chased away the eagle called her story very unusual, given that the dog outweighed the bird by at least five times. But angry Homer residents were soon marching on City Hall to call for a ban on the growing backyard practice of feeding eagles.
Complaints had been rising about the number of eagles attracted to town. Pet owners were calling state troopers to say they were afraid to open their doors with white-headed scavengers loitering thuggishly nearby. They asked if an attack on a small child might be next.
"People call me all the time," says Lee Mayhan, who started a group called Alaska Eagle Watch Network to promote more natural raptor lifestyles. "Yesterday there was a lady right in the middle of town feeding eagles french toast. That's no way to treat wildlife."
But Homer's outspoken environmentalists, united on such local debates as shallow gas development and big-box stores, are split on the eagle question. Reformers are up against a popular local institution. For more than 20 years, the "Eagle Lady" has been feeding hundreds of eagles in winter from her trailer compound on the Homer Spit.
Jean Keene, now 80, once told a reporter she didn't believe in the adage "let nature take its course." People had taken much from wildlife, she said, and she wanted to give something back. Keene and her helpers tote 30 tons of frozen cannery waste to the beach every year, drawing photographers and spectators to Homer along with the eagles, and contributing a big dollop of color to countless television and newspaper travelogues.
Thirty years ago, a Christmas bird count might find a dozen bald eagles in Homer. Lately the peak is 500 or more.
On the beach in front of Keene's trailer, mountains and sea provide a backdrop for close-up photos that have come to dominate the world of bald eagle pictures.
Feeding a problem?
Less commonly photographed is the industrial zone of the Spit at the photographers' backs, where hundreds of gorged eagles linger atop light poles, fuel storage tanks and radio antennae in a Hitchcockian spectacle of nature gone mad.
In the eyes of the law, feeding eagles is no different than feeding chickadees -- as long as it doesn't endanger the federally protected birds. Keene's operation has drawn only an occasional harrumph from biologists. She says she has shortened her feeding season over the years so the birds will disperse in April and nest.
In the past two years, however, the feeding zones around Homer have multiplied. Biologists say they've heard reports of eight to 12 backyard locations where private individuals have started setting out food to draw birds, either for fun or to entertain bed-and-breakfast guests. Professional photographers have started their own feeding operations, flipping frozen herring in the air to create perfect moments for clients in photo seminars. (Some advertisements on the Internet, for seminars costing $1,500 a week plus lodging and meals, say the eagles "congregate" in Homer every winter but don't mention feeding.)
"I wasn't so concerned when Jean was just doing it, but this year we started getting calls right and left," says Dave Roseneau, a federal bird biologist with the Homer-based Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.
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