Alumni Report Difficult Bald Eagle Nesting Season

Two Northern Michigan University biology alumni returned to the Upper Peninsula last week as part of their continuing efforts to research the bald eagle population in the state, which they say has declined due to factors ranging from trauma to bird flu. William Bowerman, a 1991 master's graduate, and Michael Wierda, who earned his master's in 2008, have discovered that this nesting season has been particularly difficult. In the process of banding eaglets, the duo encountered severely malnourished and dead chicks, and nests that were empty and damaged by storms.

Bowerman, who has studied bald eagle ecology for more than four decades, was featured in a related Bridge Michigan report on research conducted in lower Michigan last month.

"Our initial impressions are that this is not a typical year," he stated in the story. "We are seeing widespread reproductive difficulties that appear linked to a combination of severe weather and limited food availability. … The long winter, spring flooding and repeated severe wind events likely created very challenging conditions for nesting eagles. While each of these events can occur naturally, it is unusual to see them happening together and affecting nests across such a broad area."

Bowerman is professor of wildlife ecology and environmental toxicology at the University of Maryland. Wierda is the pesticide safety education program director for Utah State University. Both have roles on the team of the Ann Arbor-based Wings Over Water Research Institute, which was founded in 2025 in the face of federal funding cuts to develop a new, sustainable model for environmental research that focuses on "monitoring birds, protecting waters and inspiring change."

Bridge Michigan reported that more than $700,000 in federal funding expected this year through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative for bald eagle and colonial waterbird monitoring has yet to be released.

"We were all under the same belief in November that this funding would be available," Bowerman said. "And we didn't find out until April that it wasn't coming."

Read the full Bridge Michigan story here. Read an NMU feature on a 2024 eaglet banding effort in Marquette by Bowerman and Wierda here.