A crowd gathered Friday for the ceremonial unveiling of a new U.S. Postal Service stamp designed to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday.
The stamps, illustrated by David Sibley, show the eagle from hatchling to adulthood. And, as American Bald Eagle Foundation Director Aaron Cleveland told the crowd, they are a conservation success story.
The bird is often cited as such due to its precipitous decline down to just a few hundred nesting pairs in the 1950s. They were listed as an endangered species in the late 1970s and since then have recovered and were removed from that list in 2007.
“We must remember that conservation is not something that we finish, conservation is something we practice,” he said. “Every letter that carries this stamp becomes a reminder of what we value. Our wildlife, our communities, our values, our eagle and our eagle’s enduring spirit.”
The bald eagle was officially designated as the national bird of the U.S. by President Joe Biden in 2024. Chilkat Indian Village Vice President Jones Hotch told the gathered crowd that they are privileged to live alongside the national bird in the Chilkat Valley and asked the assembled crowd for their help in protecting local eagle habitat, including in the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, “in recognition of their statewide, national and international significance.”
Haines Mayor Tom Morphet told the crowd he’d been a stamp collector from an early age and showed the crowd a stamp he saved from another celebration of the nation’s birth, this one in Philadelphia 50-years-ago.
“I had the privilege of being downtown for the celebration of our 200th birthday,” he said.
There, he visited the post office which was open despite the celebration landing on a Sunday.
“The post office was open so they could stamp the first day of issue of a new series of stamps showing the founders of our country signing the Declaration of Independence,” Morphet said. “This is one of the proudest items of my stamp collection.”
Morphet, USPS Alaska District Manager Steve Adkins, Hotch and Cleveland helped unveil the new stamps which were immediately on sale in the foundation’s lobby.
The Chilkat Valley was not the first place the new stamp was revealed. The postal service officially revealed the stamps for the first time at the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, Minnesota.