Minnesota Eagle Center, Sen. Klobuchar celebrate passage of National Bird Bill
WABASHA, Minn. — United States Sen. Amy Klobuchar visited Minnesota's National Eagle Center on Monday to celebrate the official designation of the bald eagle as the National Bird of the United States.
President Biden recently signed the bill, which was co-sponsored by Klobuchar.
"The strength, the tenacity and relentlessness of the bald eagle match the people in this room," Klobuchar said.
She says the center in Wabasha was visited by 49,000 last year.
The star of Monday's celebration was Angel, a bald eagle rescued with a broken wing along the Mississippi River in 1999. She was treated at the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota and is now a resident of the center.
"Those values of freedom, we think of the eagle, soaring over these beautiful rivers, the values of being stewards of our land, which this area is all about here," Klobuchar said.
Preston Cook is the Minnesotan who discovered there wasn't an official national bird.
"It really does show you what it takes to take a passion of your own and inform your federal government of something we all value and thought was there for us, and actually wasn't," Cook said.
Cook donated over 40,000 pieces of personal memorabilia of bald eagles to the center for the public to enjoy through the new year.
The debut of the pesticide DDT in the 1940s helped contribute to the bald eagle's near-extinction in the U.S., with its diet of polluted fish leading to weakened egg shells and low eaglet survival rates by the 1960s.
DDT was banned in the country in 1972, with the bird making a dramatic comeback by the turn of the 21st Century.
The National Eagle Center helped lead the movement following its years of work to help repopulate the bird.
According to the World Population Review, Minnesota is second to Alaska in bald eagle population numbers. Minnesota has nearly 10,000, while Alaska has around 30,000.
