Hello Larry:

Generalities, particularly about wildlife, are often misleading. And the conventional wisdom that generic "eagles" are doing great in the US today just isn't supported by the past decade of data at least for the our "common" eagle, the Golden. I'm not saying lead is responsible... we don't know that. But the statement of conventional wisdom you provide above about the rosy population status of eagles is just not categorically correct.

Here is the data:

CURRENT STATUS AND CONCERNS
Recent analyses. Long-term trends from raptor migration counts and
CBCs
indicate that populations of the Golden Eagle have declined in much of
the western
United States since the mid-1980s. Statistically significant long-term declines in
raptor migration
counts of eagles were recorded from 1983 to 2005 at the Goshute
Mountains, Nevada (-
2.4% per year, P <0.01), from 1985 to 2005 at the Manzano Mountains,
New Mexico (-
1.9 % per year, P <0.05), and from 1991 to 2005 at Lipan Point, Arizona
(-10.0% per
year, P <0.01). Marginally significant (0.05 < P ≤ 0.10) declines were
also recorded at
Mt. Lorette, Alberta from 1993 to 2005 (-2.2% per year, P = 0.08) and
in the Bridger
Mountains, Montana from 1992 to 2005 (-2.3% per year, P = 0.10). In
contrast, a nonsignificant
increase was recorded from 1987 to 2004 at the Wellsville Mountains,
Utah
(0.6% per year).
More recently, from 1995 to 2005 the magnitude of significant rates of
decline
increased markedly in the Goshute Mountains (-8.6% per year, P <0.01)
and Manzano
Mountains (-5.3% per year, P <0.01), a marginally significant decline
occurred in the
Wellsville Mountains (-6.0% per year, P = 0.10), a non-significant 3.8%
per year decline
occurred at Bonney Butte, Oregon (P = 0.16), and no trend occurred at
Boise Ridge,
Idaho (0.1% per year). In addition, a non-significant increase of 4.5%
per year was
detected at Chelan Ridge, Washington (1998-2005) (Fig. 1).
An analysis of CBC data (National Audubon Society 2002) for the western
United
States and Canada (Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada,
New Mexico,
Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, Alberta, British Columbia, Northwest
Territories,
Yukon Territory) indicated that winter populations of Golden Eagles
declined nonsignificantly
(0.4% per year) from 1983 to 2005, and significantly (-3.4% per year,
P
<0.01) from 1995 to 2005.

Although it was given legal protection in the United States in 1962
with passage
of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, the Golden Eagle suffers
low levels of
mortality from direct persecution, electrocution, collisions with
human-made structures,
and poisoning stemming from consumption of contaminated carcasses.
Habitat changes
including urbanization, agricultural development, wildfires, mining and
energy
development, and reforestation may reduce the availability of suitable
nesting and
foraging habitat. Human activities account for approximately 70% of all
direct mortality
of Golden Eagles continent-wide, with accidental trauma (27%),
electrocution (25%),
gunshot (15%), and poisoning (6%) causing most of these deaths (Franson
et al. 1995).

That's the facts as we know them at the present.