BEALE, Ind.–In a field in Beale, Indiana, on Sept. 30, someone found a dead bald eagle. As sad as it was for that majestic creature to have died, the band it was wearing around it’s foot told a story of longevity. Bald eagles are back in Indiana.

The cry that was gone for so long can now be heard in cottonwood and sycamore trees all over the state, said Dept. of Natural Resources non-game bird biologist Allison Gilette, on Indiana Outdoors.

“We’re at more than 300 nests throughout the State of Indiana in 2019,” she said. “We had 309 that were in good shape this year, which has gone beyond what our expectations were since that reintroduction began.”

Most of the bald eagles in Indiana died off before the 1970s.

“Especially in the 1970s we had a big issue with a pesticide that was very common called DDT. It wiped out a lot of birds, especially those that were high up on the food chain, so mainly raptors.”

Gilette said the pesticide would get absorbed into the bird’s body fat and the chemicals would soften the egg shells. They would crack when the eagles sat on them. After DDT was banned in 1972, bird populations started to recover, but it took until the late 1980s before Indiana would have a more substantial eagle population.

But, a reintroduction program has helped bald eagles thrive.

“They’re almost everywhere. They’ve gotten to the point where we’re seeing them in retention ponds in the middle of an agricultural field, and that’s not typical for a bald eagle,” said Gilette. “We have such a massive amount of eagles that they need to find territory to breed. They’re going out to these more marginal areas.”

Gilette said the DNR does not actively track every eagle, like they used to. They now rely on reports from people who see nests in trees.

“Just look up at the canopy of a tree that’s typically like a cottonwood or a sycamore and see if there’s something that’s the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.”

The eagle that was found in Knox County had a band that indicated that not only are eagles living in Indiana, but they are living a long time. That eagle was banded in 1998, and lived to 21.