Last Feast of the Eagles

ALONG THE CHILKAT VALLEY, Alaska, Nov. 22, 2005 — -- Winter has already come to this spectacular valley, and an annual drama is well under way. For as far as the eye can see, every tree along the Chilkat River is bending under the weight of bald eagles.

Thousands of them have gathered here for the last feast of the season. It is the largest gathering of this majestic bird anywhere in the world.

Because of a unique geological phenomenon, the Chilkat is the last major river to freeze in southeast Alaska each winter, and eagles from hundreds of miles away flock to the fertile valley where the Chilkat meanders through a rugged mountain range that defies description. It is literally a drama of life and death, acted out in a grand theater.

The eagles are here to feast on chum salmon. The salmon are returning to the river in which they were born, and they are here to lay the eggs that will produce the next generation of chums. And then they will die, as all salmon must after procreation.

So the eagles are feasting on salmon that have spawned out, but many of the eagles that have gathered here will also die this winter.

Not right away, because for now there is much here to eat. But toward the end of winter, when there are few fish in rivers that are rich with salmon during much of the year, meals will be few and far between.

"We would see them [dead eagles] in the first layer of grass above the river," recalls Sid Morgan, a retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife official who worked in the eagle protection program for many years.

The starving eagles had been on the edge of the river, but the river offered little to eat. So they would struggle back up the bank, and then fall face forward into the grass.

"Their wings would be spread out, and their beaks would be buried in the grass," says Morgan, who along with a boyhood friend, Fred Robards, helped establish the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve. The preserve is now a state park, extending a few miles south of the Tlingit village of Klukwan.

Like most native villages that were already here when outsiders arrived to search for the gold that was buried in the steep mountains of southeast Alaska, Klukwan is in exactly the right place. Three rivers converge near the village, assuring an ample supply of wildlife, and the weather can be relatively benign.