We are excited to announce Doris Mager will return this year to speak at the Alaska Bald Eagle Festival in November! Doris is a veteran eagle advocate, Doris Mager, dubbed “The Eagle Lady of Florida” by former Gov. Bob Graham. She has spent 15 years nursing birds, rehabilitating about 80 eagles and releasing 15 into the wild. “I was one of the first people in Florida to pick up an eagle.” Frustrated by the number of birds wounded by gunshots, Mager surrendered her bird-treating permit and secured a permit for handling raptors. She took her birds on the lecture circuit as an educator, hoping respect for the birds she imparted to schoolchildren might rub off on their parents. Now 88, Mager heads up Save Our American Raptors, and has spread her message on trips around the United States and the world. “People are still shooting red-tailed hawks. My message is still about the same. Birds of prey are misunderstood by many people. People think they’re all vultures, and will still kill them for the fun of it. People need to know that God put every animal on earth for a reason, and every one of them depends on another one,” Mager said. While there are fewer eagle shootings and less problems from substances like the pesticide DDT, which were issues when she started her career, new threats have arisen, including loss of habitat to development, increasing numbers of collisions with automobiles, and new toxins, she said. “We always have to be vigilant. We have to stay out of (raptors’) hair, but we also need to be there when they’re in trouble. Learning about Mother Nature, this is what it’s all about,” Mager said. Mager has thrown herself into efforts to raise money for her cause, including by writing a book and by riding a bicycle across the country at age 60. We have her book in our Gift shop and she will be on hand to do a book signing this year! In 1979, she spent a week in an unoccupied eagle’s nest to raise money to build a Florida aviary. Securing permission required the approval of U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials in Washington, D.C ., and the nest was a small one, only about four feet deep, about 50 feet up a pine tree, at the edge of a lake. “When I got in there, I hung on (but) it was great to wake up in the morning and see what the eagles saw. I could understand why the eagles loved it. They could look out over the lake every day and fly over it and back… I can still see that lake and the morning fog on it,” she said. Mager, who visited Haines in October 1985, said she’s excited to get back to the Chilkat Valley. As this trip will be during the peak of the eagle migration to the Chilkat, she’s hoping to see more birds. Also, she said, Alaska eagles are bigger than ones in Florida, sometimes twice as large. “It’s a beautiful bird to see in flight.” Join us in November and meet this incredible woman!
Posted on: Thu, 08 May 2014 05:02:39 +0000