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Rehabilitating Bald Eagles is a specialty of the �ԹϺ��� Center for Birds of Prey. Since it opened in 1979, the center has released nearly 800 of them back to the wild, and it serves as the home base for �ԹϺ��� Florida’s EagleWatch community science program. The team at the center’s Raptor Trauma Clinic is used to seeing eaglets injured after falling from their nests, poisoned after eating rodenticide-laced rats, or orphaned after their parents are killed in territory fights, car strikes, and other incidents. Still, it was a shock when, in the span of three weeks, four eaglets fell from two West Orange County nests. Two of those eaglets were injured after becoming entangled in plastic and did not survive.

EagleWatch volunteers Gloria Green and Dr. Wei-Shen Chin monitor the two nests in the town of Oakland, and they were heartened to see five eaglets hatch this year. Now, at the end of Florida’s Bald Eagle nesting season, just one eaglet remains unscathed. Green says she has never experienced such a tough season in her many years as an EagleWatch nest monitor. She and Chin are urging the public to responsibly dispose of all plastic waste, especially fishing line—one of the eaglets died after dangling from its nest with fishing line around its leg. Fishing line is of particular danger to Bald Eagles and other “fish specialists,” or species that consume mostly fish, like Ospreys, wading birds, and shorebirds. If left in the environment, it can easily be confused for nest material or picked up accidentally while a bird is fishing for its next meal.

Another eaglet that died was tangled in green construction netting, its injuries so severe that it had to be euthanized. It’s a stark reminder that plastic waste in the environment can have tragic consequences for wildlife.

While Bald Eagles are one of the center’s most frequently treated species, the center also saw an unusual species this spring. Patient 293, a Crested Caracara, was hit by a car in the St. Cloud area. It is only the fourth caracara to be treated at the center within the last five years. After being treated for dehydration, ocular trauma, abrasions, and bruising, it returned to the wild. A federally-listed Threatened species, the Crested Caracara is widespread throughout Central and South America, but in the U.S., it can only be found in Florida and parts of the Southwest.