Eagle Population in NE Iowa Continues to Grow

LANSING, Iowa (AP) — An area in northeast Iowa has become a home for bald eagles as numbers of the predatory bird continue to grow around Lansing.

A nonprofit conservation group, Friends of Pool 9, found 91 active bald eagles' nests, a number that has gradually grown in eight years of monitoring near Pool 9 of the Mississippi River.

A biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the 240,000-acre Upper Mississippi Wildlife and Fish Refuge over 261 river miles, says the habitat is welcoming to bald eagles.

Thousands of wild acres provide plenty of food, and the birds like to perch and nest in the big, old cottonwood trees lining the bank.

Bald eagles were listed as an endangered species from 1967 until 2007.