An anonymous $100,000 donation will speed up plans for the American Bald Eagle Foundation to provide flight training for rehabilitated birds.
The money – which arrived July 16 as a check from the San Francisco-based Schwaab Charitable Fund – will pay to build two chain-mesh cages where birds will regain their strength and learn to fly again.
“We were thinking it was maybe $500. (Foundation founder) Dave (Olerud) opened the envelope and just stared at the check,” said Cheryl McRoberts, director of operations.
The two pens, measuring 80 feet long and 25 feet high and wide, will go on property resident Bob Henderson recently dedicated to the foundation on Comstock Road. Construction will start this summer using materials already on hand. Completion is expected by next spring.
In the meantime, the foundation hopes to complete the addition to its main building, build six outdoor mews there, and have 10 permanent, resident birds on hand for November’s bald eagle festival, including two bald eagles.
“We want to have the grandest grand-opening,” McRoberts said.
The center currently is home to a bald eagle, a falcon, a barred owl and a great horned owl. It’s seeking injured birds for permanent display including an American kestrel, a saw-whet owl, a screech owl, merlin, golden eagle and red-tailed hawk. The group plans to eventually have three resident eagles.
Alaska has only two facilities with flight training pens and the ones in Haines will be used for birds treated at a raptor hospital in Juneau, said Dan Hart, the foundation’s raptor curator.
Hart has received 500 hours of training to operate the training pens. The pens would serve as a place for birds to rebuild their musculature and cardiovascular systems after medical treatment.