Drive-up nature is better than nothing

The woman dubbed “eagle lady”
grabbed a chunk of fish and threw it out on the sand in front of
her trailer. Fifteen bald eagles immediately jumped off their
perches and flew into a scuffle for the meat.

A large,
younger eagle, its feathers still gray-brown and mottled, emerged
with the prize clamped in its talons. It hopped to the edge of the
flock and flapped into the air. As its feet lifted off the ground,
its talons tucked the fish up and under its tail feathers and it
flew out across the water, heading for Alaska’s Kachemak Bay
State Wilderness Park.

It was a beautiful scene there in
Homer, as my family sat in our car and watched from 20 feet away.
We’d traveled to Alaska over the Christmas holiday to visit
friends and see the arctic winter. Bald eagles swooped and squawked
in the air and danced and strutted on the ground, and sometimes
their six-foot wingspans filled the view from our windshield. My
two young daughters were awed and mesmerized.

The “eagle
lady,” as she has become known, has been feeding eagles for 30
years, and has thereby garnered relentless attention from the media
and professional photographers. On the few days we watched, about
100 bald eagles showed up, along with a handful of people in
automobiles, a few with cameras supporting long, professional
lenses.

It is estimated that 80 percent of all commercial
eagle photos seen in the United States are taken right here in
Homer. We are nature-starved, and these images feed us. But what we
saw is also controversial.

The Anchorage Audubon Society
recently requested that Homer outlaw eagle-feeding, and the local
Kachemak Bay Conservation Society continues to debate the issue.
Conservation groups, as do wildlife ecologists, usually believe it
is unethical and harmful to make food available to wildlife.
Feeding wildlife — making beggars of them — often
attracts animals like bears or mountain lions, and they may end up
dead because of it.

As a conservationist and working
ecologist in Colorado, I should side with my colleagues who are
adamantly against feeding eagles and other wildlife. But,
I’ve begun to notice other sides to the issue.

What
I mostly see nowadays are children — like mine — who
are confined all day in brick, sterile school buildings with little
exposure to the natural world. I see their parents — like me
— similarly holed up in dry, monotonous office buildings. I
see our homes and strip malls marching across the landscape
devouring tens of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat every
year. So is it any wonder that policymakers take anti-environmental
stances, while the decoupling of nature to human culture is
evermore entrenched?

In Homer, and all around the Kenai
Peninsula, there’s a treasure trove of opportunities for
seeing wild animals doing what comes naturally. Whales, bears,
salmon, wolves, moose, otters, and sea lions roam amid the
glaciers, mountain peaks, raging rivers and ocean. In much of
Alaska, nature in the raw is the headline act on the main stage.

As we watched the bald eagle feeding, another adult eagle
snatched a hunk of meat and flew to a post three feet away from my
open car window. The huge bird ripped and tore at the fish with its
beak and claws, bits of meat and blood flying through the air. As
it periodically looked at me in the car, its eyes dispassionate and
intensely piercing, I squeezed backwards in my seat and wondered
aloud if I should roll up the window.

For I, too, am
meat, and what an incredible feeling it was to realize it.

I don’t advocate feeding wildlife in any situation
where it may be dangerous for people or for the wild creatures
themselves, but I believe we need to think more creatively, and
give the public more watchable wildlife opportunities that let all
of us be awed and mesmerized.

The signs at the eagle
lady’s said, “Eagle Feeding Station. Please Stay in Your
Car.” I see it differently, more like “Drive-up nature. Next
summer’s blockbuster hit. Coming to this special parking
lot.”