Each Bald Eagle nesting season brings its own rewards and challenges. Inactive nests reactivate, keeping volunteers on their toes, and opportunities for education and advocacy yield gratifying conservation wins. Some seasons start with obvious challenges, like a hurricane, but the 2024 nesting season brought subtler threats to Florida’s nesting eagles. 

EagleWatchers observed and documented platform removals from cell towers where eagles once nested, which in many cases made it impossible for the eagles to rebuild and raise eaglets there. This is concerning in areas like Tampa Bay, where the majority of eagles nest on cell towers. See page 4 to read more about this issue and the impacts it may have had on productivity this season.

We are also closely monitoring implementation of the new federal general disturbance permit process which issues instant permits without review to applicants who self-identify that they meet the permit requirements. Keeping track of nests with disturbance permits informs our monitoring efforts so that we know if law enforcement should be called out for an illegal disturbance.

Despite these new challenges, EagleWatch celebrated another successful nesting season, with 764 volunteers monitoring 1,278 nests. Monitoring data for 2024 showed that productivity (fledglings per occupied nest) was similar to last season (1.24 compared to 1.22) and the fledge rate (percentage of chicks that survived to fledge) remained steady at 92 percent. Over my eight years in this role, the percentage of occupied nests that successfully fledge young has remained stable at around 80 percent.

As we prepare for the 2025 nesting season, EagleWatch volunteers will continue to be on the front line of Bald Eagle conservation, collecting critical data to track nesting trends and inform management decisions. 

This article first appeared in the 2023-2024 EagleWatch report.