Hancock House Publishers
Author and Topic Forum

Various Hancock Wildlife Research Center Projects:

The Hancock Wildlife Research Center Web site is my personal site for discussions about my interest in bald eagles and other wildlife issues. From time to time we attempt to update the site about various Bald Eagle Festivals, projects we support, pertinent eagle issues and biology. For example: --- read more --->>>

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Bald Eagle Festivals: If you wish to post updates on additional festivals please send this info to me. I am hopeful that we will get some volunteer to update the site about the bald eagle festivals over the entire country -- there are getting to be a lot of eagle festivals outside the 5 dominant ones here on the west coast. Maybe I will see you at one of the Festivals -- I try and attend all of them and give talks at most of them. They are all great educational events and a fine opportunity to see eagles -- many eagles!

Bald Eagle Biology: The background on bald eagle biology was originally posted here from my book but with the introduction of the live CAM I have been trying to give pertinent updates specific to what is happening. Unforutnately many people have only followed the Infotec site and missed our posting. This site is being totally rewritten to make it much more user friendly -- an attribute it lost in the flurry of the CAM postings and indexing -- or lack thereof!

Various Bald Eagle Projects: There are a number of studies that I am quite involved with or support. . These range from assisting the various bald eagle festivals (mentioned above) to my own studies. The latter include:

1) The Urban Bald Eagles of Greater Vancouver:

This project was started in 2000 and was initiated to track the extent of the eagles expansion into the urban environment since my 1960's studies that also covered this same area. The objective is to track the changes in eagle numbers and reproductive success and get some understanding of why they are now so successful.

NOTE on Bald Eagle Number Changes; in the 1960's I could only find 3 pairs of eagles nesting in the same area that I now have over 150 pairs nesting. The 5 years of my data has been turned over to the WiTS program to be the beginning of their expanded eagle stewardship program for the entire Fraser Valley. With my other nests from up the Fraser Valley and the additional records, sometimes on the same territories, we now probably have upwards of 200 nests in the region. I suspect this will go to 300 plus for the total lower Fraser Valley area.

The WiTS program, which is sponsored by a non-profit organization, seeks funding from private and governmental sources. I am on the Fraser Valley steering committee. Our present effort is to get the detailed biological data and location data very accurately recorded so that the various cities or municipalities can use our data base for decisions on planning. We need the data base to be sufficiently accurate to know the legally described lot each nest or important wildlife tree is located.

Funding: David Hancock's study of the nest location and productivity: I have underwritten the cost of collecting my data over the years and have not sought nor do seek further funds for my study.

2) WiTS Project: Bald Eagle Inventory of the Fraser VAlley & Greater Vancouver area:

This project follows the WiTS detailed study of over 640 nests on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands where the data has been made available to all regional government and ngo bodies. The newly initiated Fraser Valley study needs funding on two fronts:

(i) To hire a RP Bio -- this is the accepted technician who will define both the habitat and the legal description of the nest or wildlife tree for government use and if necessary court reference. This cost can range from one to several hours of work per nest.

Funding: WiTS is seeking funding for this and I am happy to support this with funds and / or hopefully further stewards arising from the CAM publicity.

(ii) To hire students to enter all the nest records, productivity data and RB Bio data into the official data base so the information is available to the government departments and ngo groups.

Funding: Earlier, I had suggested we would hire, from the funds raised through Infotec, a student to do this data entry but these funds did not arrive. I am now hopeful that we will independently or during the next years CAM efforts and donations be able to hire this person.

3) To Re-Census the Southwest Coast Bald Eagle Populations:

This study is to give a comparison with earlier studies undertaken by myself in the early 1960's and other peoples studies of parts of the region at other periods in between then and now. the 40+ year comparison would be quite unique in biology.

The purpose of this study is to give a comparison on how the bald eagle population has changed over 40 years. We know that eagles have now invaded the urban areas but a full comparison of wilderness distribution and productivity to urban distribution and productivity has not been done.

Funding: If funds are forthcoming from these CAM donations and advertising this is a priority study.

4) Study of Migration Movements of Bald Eagles is little known: Satellite banding of several local nesting bald eagles would greatly assist us in understanding where and when they travel. Very few of our eagles have been tracked over their yearly cycle. Where they go and when is little known and no records exist for banded nestlings. We have proposed using satellite back-packs to trace these birds movements. This proposed project will be done with Dr. David Bird of McGill University and probably supplemented with his students. He has been out to view our CAM site on several occasions to discuss this and other projects.

Funding: I would like to contribute CAM funds and time to this project.

5) Bald Eagle CAMs to be expanded:

The expansion of CAM projects has been suggested by the CAM followers and many have contributed funds specifically for this purpose. When I first offered the CAM to the public, my initial mailing of notice was addressed to raptor biologist and conservation organizations as I was hopefull that anyone could undertake a nesting behavioral study on bald eagles from the CAM. I had offered to store the years work so that the student would not have to make the commitment until he saw that the nesting season was a success -- something that of course did not happen. My point is that their is still an incredible lot of detailed behavior available on our tapes. This upcoming years efforts to put cameras in 3 nests for next year will add more potential for studies. These extra cameras as largely so that students, school or university, can be assured of being able to follow a successful nesting pair through the entire breeding season.

Funding: I have been given many of the donations to further these CAM installations. We will do this with some of the funds recently donated.

David Hancock
Hancock Wildlife Research Center