Bald Eagle Reward Shooting & Reward Paid
(by Dick Byers)

The following post by Dick Byers, Westmoreland Bird & Nature Club, appeared on PABirds List Server on Friday, November 21.

Hi everyone,

Last evening Rose Tillmann and I of the Westmoreland Bird and Nature Club attended the board meeting of the Westmoreland County Sportsmen's League where PA Game Commission officer Gary Toward gave us the names of the three informants whose testimony led to the arrest of the man who shot the male bald eagle at the Beaver Run Reservoir. Rose (our club treasurer) wrote out three checks for $319 each. Of the $957 reward money we collected, $250 came from the Audubon Society of Western PA, $250 from the Three Rivers Birding Club and the remaining $457 from the Westmoreland Bird & Nature Club. ($250 from the club and $207 from private individuals). Club member Linda Lou Baker raised $142 by herself from patrons at the Italian Club in Export where she works.

Checks amounting to $500 were also paid out from the Sportsmen's League, so the informants received a total of $1457 in reward money. We are withholding their names. One wished to be anonymous since he knew the defendant personally. The other two didn't care but I think the public should know they can testify to wildlife criminal activity without fear of retaliation by the accused. 

After the meeting we got more details of the incident from officer Gary Toward. The man who shot the eagle did not do it intentionally, but I lost all sympathy for him. There were two hunters involved. Officer Toward had good reasons to believe they were on the Beaver Run property (posted no hunting and no trespassing) well before hunting hours. The male was perched 50 yards away from the nest on a dead snag. The hunters heard turkeys gobbling while they were walking a logging road that circles the nest. The nest is high on a ridge overlooking the lake. The defendant saw the silhouette of the eagle on the dead snag and thought it was a turkey, but hollered to his buddy that he couldn't see a beard. His buddy replied, "I can see a beard, shoot it!" Remember this is probably before regular hunting hours and too dark to make out the prominent white head and tail of an adult bald eagle. After the shot the bird came off the perch and flew to lower ground near the lakeshore. Upon seeing the bird in the air the shooter said to his buddy that it looked like an eagle, to which his buddy replied, "Impossible, there are no eagles around here." When they found the bird perched in a multiflora rose bush below they could see it was an adult bald eagle and got out of there. They were seen leaving the area by two local residents who thought it odd they were leaving at about the time hunting hours were just starting. Later that afternoon, Bob Shanta, whose property borders the Beaver Run Reservoir property, was walking his dog along the boundary. The dog got excited, ran into the reservoir area and discovered the bird which Bob immediately reported. Investigating Officer Toward, upon getting the information, was at first skeptical about the bird being an eagle, but went down the next morning to check it out. When he saw the eagle he went down to a Game Commission warehouse and got some boxes and a blanket. He called WCO Tom Fazi for help and the two of them captured the bird rather easily with the blanket and put him in a cardboard box. The bird could not fly and did not resist much at all. At the time they could not tell that the bird had been shot. There was some fluid around the eye, but no blood anywhere. They thought the bird had injured itself or was sick, so they arranged transport to the Tamarack Rehab Center in Crawford County. They met the rehabilitators at a point on I-80 and transferred the bird. The rehabilitators also thought the bird had just flown into something. X-rays taken several days later revealed the lead pellets and a broken wing. One of the pellets had entered the right eye. When Gary Toward learned that the bird had been shot he made arrangements with the state police to overfly the Beaver Run with their helicopter to look for a possible nest. They found it within minutes with one eaglet in it. Upon landing officer Toward immediately took a road killed deer into the nest vicinity, partly skinned it and left it for the female eagle to help feed her young. He then began a door to door investigation for any information and found the two men who had seen the hunters leaving at about the time they should have been just starting to hunt. Those two men provided officer Toward with a description of the hunter's vehicle even down to the decals on the car. 

Later, a third man overheard the two hunters talking about being on the Beaver Run property and going back to look for a shell. Knowing about the eagle shooting occurring that same morning, this third informant notified the Game Commission. Toward now had the name of the man and where he lived. He found the car matching the description he had, except that the decals had been scraped off. When they questioned the defendant, Shannon S. Binda, of Jeanette, he confessed to the shooting.

The male eagle recovered from the injured wing but became blind in his right eye, so he was not returned to the nest area. While the investigation was going on Toward took road killed deer from the highways and replaced the old carcasses so the female eagle always had fresh meat available. Although he saw that the carcasses were being used, he never saw the female eagle using them. He monitored the nest and found a healthy second eaglet, so the birds seemed to be doing well and he continued to provide fresh deer and to remove the old carcasses. On July 4th, an appropriate day for our national bird, the two eaglets fledged from the nest, so this part of the story had a happy ending. Bob Mulvihill of the Powdermill Bird Banding Station believes that this has ornithological significance that a single eagle parent could successfully raise two young with the help of carrion. He and Gary Toward both believe the male eagle should be released, that these birds have resilience beyond our imagination and it would be better for the bird to take his chances than spend the rest of his life in a cage. Eagles are long lived in captivity easily surviving to 25-35 years or more. The bird may be able to survive just on carrion. Bald eagles are scavengers by nature as much as they are hunters of fish.

I think officer Gary Toward did a magnificent job on this case and went beyond the call of duty with his concern of the lone eagle parent. He could not have made an arrest without the information provided by the informants, but his door to door investigation turned up two of these men who testified. 

Pictures were taken at the meeting and the story will soon appear in local newspapers. The word needs to get out that there are organizations around who will provide reward money for information on people who shoot endangered species.