Do not molest, frighten or kill

WASHINGTON – What could be one of the proudest moments in U.S. conservation – the removal of bald eagles from the threatened and endangered species list – has been delayed again as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service struggles to define a single word: disturb.

If the regal bird is ever delisted, as officials have promised, an eagle-protection statute from 1940 will be left to guide new development along the Potomac River and other places where eagles now thrive. That law makes it illegal to “disturb” an eagle.

But what does that mean? Annoy? Frighten? Injure? Kill? The national symbol, having overcome trophy hunting and DDT, now waits on a balky bureaucracy and a seven-letter verb.

The issue could have serious effects on development along the eagle-rich Potomac. Development projects and efforts to protect eagles have been in conflict here before, as in the 1999 furor when an employee at the National Harbor project in Prince George’s County, Md., cut down a tree that apparently held a nest.

Now, environmentalists fear the government will settle on a narrow definition of “disturb” – like one that prohibits only killing birds, injuring them or driving them from their nests.

The eagles nearly disappeared from the continental United States, thanks to hunting in the 19th century and the eggshell-weakening pesticide DDT in the 20th century. By 1963, only 417 breeding pairs were left.

But then came a ban on DDT and new protections for the eagle, named an endangered species in 1967. The bird was upgraded to “threatened” in 1995, and today there are more than 7,000 pairs in the lower 48 states.

To crown the eagle’s comeback, the president announced it would be formally removed from the list. President Clinton said that. In 1999.

The word “disturb” is found in the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, which will become the primary law about eagles if the birds lose threatened-species protection. It lists all the things one cannot do to the national bird: pursue, shoot, shoot at, poison, wound, kill, capture, trap, collect, molest, disturb.

The Fish and Wildlife Service decided that the last term needed defining before the law could be enforced. Last February, they proposed a definition: A bird would be considered “disturbed,” they wrote, if it was dead, injured or forced to abandon its nest.

Environmentalists objected, citing the dictionary. They said the government ought to use the common understanding of “disturb” and include actions that frighten, alarm or annoy bald eagles.

Think of a human example, these activists say: neighbors who squawk about a loud party.

“You can be pretty sure that you’ve disturbed them,” Michael Bean, of the New York-based group Environmental Defense, said, “even if they’re not dead or bleeding or forced to abandon their home.”

Developers thought the definition was already too expansive. “How does either the home builder or the representative from the Fish and Wildlife Service know … why exactly an eagle abandoned the nest?” asked Michael Mittelholzer, of the National Association of Home Builders.