Legal Eagle
A bald eagle perched on a cliff at Lake Pleasant.

A wildlife-advocacy group has moved to open another front in its legal battle with the federal government over bald-eagle protection.
The Center for Biological Diversity notified the U.S. Interior Department on May 8 that it intends to sue the agency over proposed new rules for enforcing the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
The act would offer fall-back protection for the bald eagle if the government removes it from the endangered species list, as has been proposed.
The protection act predates the Endangered Species Act and prohibits activities that would disturb bald and golden eagle and their nests.
Overall, the center’s officials agree that the bald eagle has made an impressive comeback under the Endangered Species Act.
But the center has already sued the Interior Department over plans to include Arizona’s bald eagles in the proposed delisting. The center claims that Arizona’s eagles make up a distinct desert-adapted population that remains threatened.
That lawsuit is before the U.S. District Court in Phoenix.
In preparation for delisting bald eagles — in Arizona and elsewhere — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been drafting new rules to update the eagle protection act. Part of that has involved spelling out what it would mean to “disturb” a bald eagle or its nest.
The center, in its notice, said the definition proposed by Fish and Wildlife would do too little to protect the eagle, if it’s delisted.
Referring the protection act by its initials, the center said: “If FWS removes bald eagles from the threatened list without making changes to the BGEPA definition of ‘disturb,’ eagle nests and habitat will be at significant risk from development and other human activities that FWS acknowledges continue to threaten bald eagles.”
That acknowledgement, the center said, came out in a Sept. 29 memo written by Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall. In it, the center said, Hall argued that the definition proposed by his agency “should be revised to ‘better protect’ eagles.”
As proposed, the rule would define “disturb” as an action that causes “injury or death to an eagle … due to interference with normal breeding, feeding, or sheltering behavior, or … nest abandonment.”
Hall, in his memo — the center said — proposed adding the phrase “or is likely to cause …”
Without that, the center said – citing the Hall’s memo – it would be difficult to prove that development or other human activities would harm eagles “without evidence of a dead or injured eagle.”
Jeff Humphrey, spokesman for Fish and Wildlife’s Arizona region, said he ordinarily cannot comment on pending litigation. He added he had not yet seen the May 8 notice of intent to sue.
A spokesman at Arizona Game and Fish said officials need more time to review the notice.