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Virginia’s bald eagles are doing well, thank you.

The Chesapeake Bay watershed provides the eagle with prime feeding ground in summer and winter, drawing these raptors from as far away as Canada and Florida.

Earlier this year, the College of William & Mary’s Center for Conservation Biology counted 1,070 occupied bald eagle nests in Virginia, a record since its survey was begun 60 years ago.

The 2016 count represents an incredible feat for a species whose 1970 population had plummeted to just 20 pairs in the commonwealth.

The majestic birds were able to bounce back because human beings have worked hard for a long time to help it do so.

If anyone tries to convince you that conservation can’t work or is too onerous, read up on the bald eagle’s rebound. It is one of the environmental movement’s great success stories of the past two generations.

Like many species, the eagle—our national symbol since 1782 when its likeness was incorporated into the Great Seal of the United States—was decimated by the pesticide DDT and other pollutants and by the loss or impairment of the places where it nests and feeds.