As a biology student at UMass in 1982, wildlife photographer Dale Monette participated in a program to help reintroduce the bald eagle to the Quabbin Reservoir. He talks about his time helping to bolster populations of the once endangered species in this digital exclusive.
See the Dale Monette at work in our full feature story on the wildlife photographer.
Read the full transcript:
Dale Monette, Wild Life Photographer/Author: When I was at UMass in the early eighties, one of my advisors asked me if I would be willing to work on a reintroduction program.
Mass Wildlife wanted to reintroduce bald eagles into Massachusetts as nesting species, and they wanted to do it in The Quabbin. So over the next six or seven years, they let a total of 42 bald, bald eagle chicks go at The Quabbin.
They would get them in Canada when they were six, seven weeks old.
An eagle will imprint on an area like a salmon, where it grows up. Takes a bald eagle five years to sexually mature. So they were hoping that within five years the Eagles would come back to Massachusetts and that’s exactly what happened.
Every bald eagle that you see now in Massachusetts, chances are pretty good that it had its start in the eighties here in The Quabbin.
