Many Hands Gather To Reinstall Bald Eagle Nesting Site

ORLEANS – Sometimes it takes a village.

When word got out that a bald eagle nesting platform had fallen on Hopkins Island, the town of Orleans, Mass Audubon, the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife and the Orleans Conservation Trust, with the help of many volunteer hands, were quick to respond.

“The speed at which conservation works [speaks to] how invested the community is,” said Tom Keras, the trust’s director of land stewardship. “A lot of folks responded very quickly, and our volunteers get a lot of credit for answering that email and showing up two days later.”

Keras said high winds knocked down the 20-foot-tall platform, which was originally built for osprey nesting but more recently has been occupied by two bald eagles.

“I got a text message over the weekend from the town’s conservation agent, John Jannell,” Keras said March 5. “He said ‘Hey, just so you know I got a couple calls about this platform that’s fallen over.’”

On Feb. 26, 10 days after that initial text message, the group organized to install a new platform at the site. Keras said the group had to wait out a period of rain and wind before gathering for the re-installation.

Mass Audubon supplied the new pole, Keras said, and the town’s harbormaster office helped transport the prefabricated pole in pieces over to the island. Once it was assembled on land, the crew of eight volunteers joined in to help hoist and reinstall it.

“It was almost like the Flag of Iwo Jima,” Keras said of the effort. “I kept making that joke, like ‘This is our Iwo Jima, guys.’”

The bald eagles are the only known pair to be currently nesting in Orleans, Keras said. While still on the state’s list of species of special concern, the revered animal has seen a population boost in recent years and is no longer listed federally as an endangered species, thanks in large part to measures at the state level that have been put in place to protect them.

“That’s a conservation win, really,” Keras said. “The de-listing of a species, it’s kind of a politically interesting topic. But it absolutely means a good thing in the conservation world because the populations are doing well enough.”

Keras said there has been evidence of the eagles having nested there this season. The hope, he said, is with the quick re-installation of the platform, they’ll return again to nest next year.

The trust has a contact list of local volunteers that it reaches out to for assistance on projects as needed, Keras said. The eight volunteers responded to an email with just two days’ notice, he said.

“It was a lot of people who had to come together very quickly, which I think is kind of the nice aspect of this story,” he said.