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This Fourth of July, like all others, we celebrated our nation's birthday with fireworks, parades and picnics with family and friends. This year, we also had another remarkable event to celebrate: the successful recovery, from the brink of extinction, of our national symbol, the American bald eagle.

On June 29, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed this eagle from the protective safety net of the Endangered Species Act, officially declaring our national bird a recovered species.

The restoration of bald eagles to every state in the lower 48 is indeed an amazing conservation success story. Prior to the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, observers were able to count fewer than 500 pairs of these birds in the lower 48. Here in Montana, at the time the eagle was listed in 1978, biologists could only locate 12 pairs statewide.

Today, following the protections of the Endangered Species Act and a ban on the pesticide DDT, it is estimated that there are over 11,000 pairs in the lower 48 states, with more than 300 pairs nesting in Montana alone. The annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count last year counted 680 bald eagles wintering under the Big Sky.

The only place where these birds have not rebounded with such success is in the American Southwest, where the desert-nesting bald eagles are threatened by development, and deserve continued protection under the Endangered Species Act.

However, Americans cannot become complacent because the current administration is working systematically to dismantle the very law that helped our nation's symbol to recover from the brink of extinction, and which protects hundreds of other species of plants and wildlife, including Montana's bull trout, grizzlies and lynx.

In March of this year, the Department of the Interior's top attorney released a new opinion on the language in the Endangered Species Act, which includes a reinterpretation of a species' “range” (where a species is normally found) that will severely diminish the act's effectiveness and protections for imperiled fish, wildlife and habitat.

In fact, if this opinion had been in effect at the time the bald eagle was proposed for listing, our nation's symbol would never have been granted the protections and resources of the Endangered Species Act because healthy populations of these species existed in Alaska.

Furthermore, Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has stated that the service is working on regulations that may severely weaken the Endangered Species Act. In April, whistleblowers within the agency provided a draft of these regulations to the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

This 117-page document revealed that the administration is considering major policy changes that would weaken the government's obligation to protect and recover plants and animals on the brink of extinction.

As we celebrate the successful recovery of the bald eagle, we - and our members of Congress - must also ensure that the Endangered Species Act remains strong and oppose any attempts by the Bush administration to weaken the law that helped to save our national symbol. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to be good stewards of the environment and leave behind a legacy of protecting endangered species and the special places they call home.

Larry McEvoy of Clancy is a retired physician and president of the board of Montana Audubon, which is dedicated to the protection of Montana's birds and their habitats.

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