The eagle soars.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Americans should celebrate the recent removal of the bald eagle from the endangered and threatened species lists, while recognizing that the landmark law that provided the bird with the protections it needed for recovery is itself in grave danger.

The eagle's recovery is a remarkable achievement. In 1967, there were fewer than 417 breeding pairs in the lower 48 states. Now there are nearly 10,000 pairs, including an impressive 500 pairs in Oregon.

Conservationists justifiably hail the eagle's delisting as evidence that the Endangered Species Act works. That it comes at a time when the act is under siege by the Bush administration, congressional conservatives, developers and business groups underscores the importance of protecting the 34-year-old law.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court is attacking the law. The court's new conservative majority recently agreed with the Bush administration and developers that the Endangered Species Act does not prevent the federal government from granting states authority to issue water pollution permits in sensitive habi- tats.

The Department of Interior, under Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, recently drafted a proposal that would weaken habitat protections, delegating authority over threatened and endangered species to the states. While the law is dated and in need of modest reforms, the Interior proposal would hamstring the law and the protections it provides. If the Interior reforms had gone into effect in 1973 instead of the ESA, the bald eagle would not have recovered - and might not have survived.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has systematically undermined the law by:

Adding fewer species to the endangered list than any administration since President Richard Nixon signed the act into law in 1973. The Bush administration has added 58 species to the endangered list - all but four of them as a result of litigation. By contrast, Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, added 231 species to the list during his four years in the White House.

Reducing the budget for enforcement. The Los Angeles Times notes that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service budgets for the interventions that saved the bald eagle have shrunk by 15 percent in real dollars since 2000. The administration's fiscal 2008 budget calls for an additional 28 percent reduction.

Appointing administrators with close ties to the same industries that have filed legal challenges to the act to oversee administration of the law. A case in point: Julie MacDonald, the deputy assistant secretary of the Interior who supervised the endangered species program, recently resigned after the department's own inspector general found she had pressured scientists to revise their recommendations and provided confidential documents to energy and agriculture lobbyists.

Routinely injecting politics and ideology into enforcement. A prime example is Vice President Dick Cheney's intervention in setting Klamath Basin water policy. The House Natural Resources Committee announced last week that it plans to investigate reports that Cheney's 2002 manipulations of the federal bureaucracy resulted in massive salmon die-off and contributed to last year's near shutdown of West Coast commercial fisheries.

The bald eagle's recovery offers new hope that this nation can meet the profound ecological challenges that lie ahead. Successfully overcoming these challenges will require strengthening, not weakening, the law that enabled this majestic bird to survive.