By David Crossland
The mighty white-tailed eagle or sea eagle, Haliaeetus albicilla, is Europe's largest bird of prey with a wing span of up to 2.60 meters (8.5 feet), a fearsome yellow beak and a withering stare.
"When he's flying he looks like a big plank of wood in the sky," biologist Thomas Neumann, 60, who has admired eagles all his life, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "During the mating season in January their high-pitched mating calls reverberate through the forest. They can even fly on their back."
"Sometimes during the mating ritual it looks like they're attacking each other in the sky," said Neumann, who is the head of WWF Germany's National Conservation Areas Management. "One fish a day is enough for them. People think they kill out of malice but that's wrong."
A Conservation Success Story
Hunted and poisoned to near extinction in many regions of Europe by the 1960s, the white-tailed eagle has returned to the continent's skies thanks to 40 years of exhausting, muddy and cold conservation work.
In Germany, a team of dedicated naturalists headed by Neumann maintained through-the-night nest vigils, made reconnaissance forays across the Iron Curtain and engaged in some nifty real estate deals to lure back the country's national symbol.
When eagle expert Neumann launched the white-tailed eagle project in 1968 in northern Germany on behalf of the global conservation organization WWF, there were only six pairs of the bird living in the wild on the Western European mainland. Now there are 531 eagle pairs in Germany alone.
It has been one of Europe's biggest conservation success stories, but Neumann admits that his team was helped by the eagle's status as an evocative symbol, and by the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Barbed Wire and Microphones
Bushy-bearded Neumann, whose ruddy complexion betrays a working life spent outdoors, is something of a rare breed himself. Colleagues says he was born wearing rubber boots. He recalls starting out by protecting the few remaining eagle's nests from fanatical egg collectors and from poachers out for a fast buck -- a genuine eagle's egg can fetch hundreds of euros.
"We used to climb the trees and wrap barbed wire round the nests, and we installed microphones," said Neumann, interviewed amid the files and eagle feathers that clutter his lakeside office in the idyllic northern town of Mölln near the Baltic Sea.
"We would watch the nests around the clock. Dutch conservationists joined us and donated some caravans for us to sleep in," said Neumann. "We had 400 helpers from all over Germany. All kinds of people came -- we even had a submarine commander. The eagle has such resonance in Germany and that attracted helpers."
The WWF project launched in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein inspired similar programs in other northern European countries like Sweden, Finland and Norway, and helped lead to the bird's reintroduction in Austria and Denmark.
A Powerful Symbol
The eagle, a symbol of power dating back to the Roman legions, has been a national emblem used by Germany and many other nations for centuries.
The white-tailed eagle, not to be confused with the white-headed bald eagle or American eagle which is the symbol of the US, is the official emblem of the Federal Republic and is ubiquitous on government buildings and uniforms, on German €1 and €2 coins and on the shirts of the national soccer team. The Reichstag parliament building boasts a giant eagle staring down at members of parliament.
The Nazis had a particularly aggressive-looking eagle clutching a swastika. Hitler's Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring, head of hunting and forestry in the Third Reich, passed a law protecting the bird.
"But I don't want to give those guys any credit," said Neumann. Besides, Nazi protection didn't do the eagle much good. Egg theft, the use of the toxic pesticide DDT in farming and the destruction of their natural habitat around lakes and rivers had almost eradicated Europe's largest eagle by the 1960s.
The eagles poisoned themselves with DDT by eating contaminated wildlife. The pesticide made the shells of their eggs so thin that they would burst when they sat on them to brood.
Communist Haven
The banning of DDT in the US and much of Europe in the early 1970s after pressure from environmental groups was a breakthrough, says Neumann. He and his team pressed on. Apart from guarding known eagle nests -- usually located in the crowns of old trees -- the WWF started urging regional authorities to designate protected areas.
The bird was having a better time in communist East Germany. The closed-off border region along the east-west frontier provided quiet areas where eagles could thrive among the watchtowers and barbed wire.
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