Jul 11, 2015 4 min read

The Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Back in April, Ron Short and Mary Kay Kuzma were walking their dogs near their Powell home when Kuzma noticed something big and brown standing in a neighbor’s yard.

Kuzma thought she was looking at a wooden statue.

“Then it moved,” recalled Short, 55.

The big and brown thing turned out to be an injured juvenile bald eagle, which a wildlife officer captured and took to the Ohio Wildlife Center on Columbus’ northwest side.

The bird, about 3 years old, underwent surgery to fix his misaligned beak — making him the second eagle admitted to the rehabilitation center this year and the seventh in the 31 years of the nonprofit entity.

“We usually get calls about hawks or especially geese that people find injured on their property, but an eagle’s definitely a special case,” said Angie Latham, community-engagement coordinator at the center, whose hospital admits almost 5,000 injured, sick or orphaned animals a year.

The other bald eagle this year was found in March in Knox County with a fractured left wing. The 19-year-old bird, banded as an eaglet in 1996 in northern Ohio, had surgery to fix his wing, which eventually had to be amputated.

Officials don’t know for sure how the birds were injured, but they suspect that the older one fought with another bird and that the younger one was hurt in a traumatic event — meaning he was involved in a fight, crashed into something or was injured another way.

Their two surgeries cost about $6,000 and prompted the center to seek donations.

Still, Latham said, the eagles needed to be saved.

“Every life matters,” she said. “Wildlife is important. Every species has its place in the ecosystem, and that one individual animal makes a difference.”

Many of the animals that arrive at the wildlife hospital each year are rehabilitated and released back into the wild.

The two eagles admitted this year, though, can no longer survive on their own, Latham said.

As a result, center officials hope they’ll serve as educational birds at a zoo, sanctuary or rehabilitation center.

“I think, for these particular individuals, being in a zoo setting is ideal because they have access to veterinary care,” said Melinda Marksz, who, as the Ohio Wildlife Center veterinarian, operated on both eagles.

“They do have good stories that can help educate the public.”

The older eagle has only one working wing.

The younger bird still flies — but, when he arrived at the center with a misaligned beak and tongue displacement, he probably couldn’t eat well, because of his injury.

Neither bird has been named, Latham said.

“Usually, we let the place that takes them name them,” she said.

When the two will be given permanent homes isn’t known.

Bald and golden eagles are protected by federal law, so their placement requires plenty of paperwork — which involves finding a home with the proper state and federal permits, said Dusty Lombardi, interim executive director of the center.

“It’s much more intense than just placing a red-tailed hawk,” Lombardi said. “Eagles are very special.”

For now, the older eagle is recovering at the hospital.

The younger bird, which has yet to develop the distinctive white head, has a temporary home at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, which in recent years has accepted two other bald eagles with wing injuries from the Ohio Wildlife Center. (One eagle that reached the center in 2012 has joined a zoo exhibit, and one from 2014 has become an educational animal.)

“We want to give people an opportunity to see the bald eagle up close — to be able to see the color of their eyes, their feathers, the size of the animals; to see how big their nests are,” said Tom Stalf, president and CEO of the zoo.

Eagles have long been considered symbols of strength.

Just a few decades ago, however, the bald eagle — the national bird of the United States — was in danger of becoming extinct.

Thanks to conservation efforts, the birds have since bounced back.

Bald eagles in Ohio have recovered from a low of four breeding pairs in 1979 to an estimated 207 such pairs in 2015, according to the Division of Wildlife of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Despite the accompanying concern, the discovery of injured bald eagles actually offers a good sign about the revival of the species, said Korey Brown, a district manager in the division.

“These are the kinds of things you’d expect to see in the wild,” Brown said, “when you have a healthy, sustainable population.”