Scrubs, Stethoscopes, and Scalpels- The Life of a Vet Student: SIA- preservation through cultural understanding of the Eagle in History, Science, and Spirit

Now, this is why I love vet school. On Tuesday I had a ZEW meeting (zoo, exotics, and wildlife club), and the speaker was Bill Voelker from SIA, the Comanche ethno-ornithological collaborative (sia means feather in Comanche). He deals mainly with eagles, and he is one of the first people to really successfully use artificial insemination in eagles to raise babies in captivity and release them back into the wild. I have to say that before this I didn’t really have much of an interest in birds, but this was probably the most interesting club meeting that I’ve been to this year, except for maybe the one about treating the wild leopards and monkeys in India.

To me personally, some of the most interesting aspects of SIA are its roots in Comanche culture. The reason this program was started was to help Comanches and other tribes get feathers from protected species that are integral to their culture, and from there it has turned into a breeding program for eagles, falcons, and other predator birds as well as a collection of artifacts and documents related to Comanche culture.

I have always been interested in Native American cultures, so to me the stories were fascinating. And it also made it clear that there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of legal acceptance in the differences in culture, something else that SIA has had an active part in. But don’t get me started on that.

One of the stories was about Golden Eagles, and the different powers of the young golden eagle versus the older golden eagle (Comanches didn’t originally realize that the difference in the young and old eagles was due to age, they thought they were two separate birds). A young golden eagle has feathers with a white body and a dark tip, and then as the eagle ages the feathers turn entirely dark. So according to Comanche culture, feathers from a young golden eagle are especially powerful during the day, while feathers from a mature golden eagle are used during night time ceremonies, and both types of feathers have very powerful medicine. Golden eagle feathers are very highly sought after for these reasons, but it’s not like you can just pick up a couple of golden eagle feathers whenever you need them. And that was one of the goals of SIA, to be able to provide them and keep the Native American cultures alive. I just really love that they’re doing that.

I think the most incredible thing about SIA though has to be their breeding program. Bill said that for one golden eagle, they were able to get her to lay 16 consecutive eggs (by removing the egg each day so that the presence of the egg wasn’t able to send a message to her ovaries to essentially tell her to stop laying eggs), and out of those 16 eggs 15 of them hatched into baby golden eagles. That is much higher than laying and hatching rates for eagles in the wild. To me, that is just awesome. A couple of eagles are retained for their breeding program, but the rest of them are released back into the wild. Recently SIA has been working with the Tennessee Park Service and has been releasing a lot of eagles back into the wild in the smokey mountains. I forget how many eagles he said had been released back into the wild, but it was a lot. Several hundred, I believe.

SIA is also now working with about 25 countries worldwide (I think- don’t quote me on the number) to implement conservation programs for avian wildlife native to those countries. I can’t remember if they are working on breeding programs with them or not, but conservation and understanding is always the first step.

All in all, it was really a very informative and interesting speech. And if it wasn’t already good enough, Bill brought in two of his eagles from SIA to show us. One was a female ornate hawk eagle, and the other was a two year old male golden eagle. They were not people shy at all, but the golden eagle didn’t seem to be too big of a fan of being carried around the room. He kept spreading his wings and flying up as far as his leash would allow (he hit the one of the tv’s that are suspended above the desks- ouch!) and the gust power from his wings was unbelievable! It was like sitting directly in front of a fan on high power, except stronger... all the papers kept blowing, as did the paper plates and cups, and if there had actually been anything heavier on the tables I am sure they would have been blown to the floor too. It was awesome. And the golden eagle was a total ham. He kept posing for pictures. So I guess he has a love/hate relationship with this kind of thing... or he was just playing it up for drama.

These two eagles were obviously going to become a part of the breeding program. You can’t release eagles who are so used to people back into the wild. So how do the eagles meant to be re-introduced into the wild get handled? SIA uses older eagles who don’t really lay eggs themselves anymore to act as nannies, and they raise the baby eagles, feed them, teach them to fly (they take them out and somehow do this from the back of a truck) and so on, until the birds can be released. And then the nanny eagles get a new crop of babies to raise. It’s a good system.

And if anything that I said sounds even remotely interesting, then you should check out www.comancheeagle.org. I will admit that the website isn’t the most impressive that I’ve seen, but they’ve got some cool pictures, and you can learn a little more about what they do. I am hoping to be able to go down and visit SIA headquarters sometime while I am still here in Oklahoma. I think it would be really interesting to volunteer with them for a summer.