Last eagle released into wild after poisoning at Inver Grove Heights landfill

The last eagle poisoned in an Inver Grove Heights landfill late last year was released Saturday by caretakers who steadily helped the bird regain its strength.

Swinging up a flap from the bird's cage, the University of Minnesota Raptor Center's Kathryn Rasp watched gleefully as the eagle stretched his wings, took off and glided through the air over the Carpenter Nature Center in Hastings on Saturday morning. The bird was one of 10 that were likely accidentally poisoned by eating carcasses of chemically euthanized animals improperly dumped in the landfill around Dec. 2.

"It's great to be able to see the end product and see him fly out," said Rasp, a veterinary intern at the Raptor Center. "It warms the heart and makes it all worth it."

On top of being poisoned from eating the carcasses of animals euthanized with barbiturates, the animal also suffered from lead poisoning and an injury to its eye duct and talon.

Inver Grove Heights police brought the first sick bird to the Raptor Center on Dec. 4. Volunteers found nine sick eagles in the snow around the landfill on Dec. 5, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife workers found another on Dec. 6. Two more eagles were found dead that week, apparent victims of pentobarbital.

"It's not often that we get this many critically injured birds at one time but that's what we're here for," said Victoria Hall, director of the Raptor Center.

It's rare to see pentobarbital poisoning in raptors. Lead poisoning is more common; 80 to 90% of all birds of prey brought to the Raptor Center suffer from it.

Lead poisoning can happen when scavenging animals, including eagles, eat fragments of lead projectiles used by hunters. They can pick up lead by eating deer entrails that hunters leave behind, or sometimes hunted pheasants and waterfowl, said Dana Franzen-Klein, the center's clinical wildlife and medical director.

"It's a reminder that we as people need to be aware of what we're putting in the environment," Franzen-Klein said. "We need to do our best to be good stewards of the environment because it can have negative effects on wildlife that circles around it and that has negative effects on us because we're all interconnected in this one ecosystem."

Watching the eagle fly away to its natural habitat, Rasp said the raptor looked to be at home. He was known to be feisty and aggressive during his rehabilitation process.

"For him I think it was a defensive kind of thing. … He was definitely a fighter," Rasp said. "Once he was outside in the pens [at the Raptor Center] he was quite calm and very different."