Golden Eagles for the Gods

The Hopi are the only Americans--native or otherwise--allowed to kill eagles and hawks. They legally collect them most anywhere they find an active nest--including their own land, Navajo land, and public land managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. The trouble is, active golden eagle nests are getting harder to find in northern Arizona. So in May 1999 the Hopi tried to take eaglets from one place they legally cannot--Wupatki National Monument.

After the Hopi eagle collectors were turned away from Wupatki, tribal chairman Wayne Taylor announced in a press release that the tribe had "never experienced a situation where [they] were so mistreated by park officials." He bitterly complained in writing to monument superintendent Sam Henderson, who, after consultation with Park Service lawyers, responded that his agency didn't have the legal authority to allow the Hopi to collect wildlife. Taylor then complained to Henderson's boss, John Cook, director of the Park Service's Intermountain Region, who reiterated what Henderson had written, further noting, "We do not agree with your argument that the permitting authorities of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under 16 U.S.C. 66a and 16 U.S.C. 703-712 are ‘overriding contrary regulations.' Indeed, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife permit in question specifically states, ‘The validity of this permit is also conditioned upon strict observance of all applicable foreign, state, local, or other federal law.' " Chairman Taylor wasn't having any of it, and he fired off a letter to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, proclaiming that the Park Service was denying "fundamental Hopi religious rights." Babbitt asked the Park Service to respond, and on July 26, 1999, acting director Linda Canzanelli once again explained to Taylor that his tribe's eagle-collecting permit "does not override the National Park Service's regulation."

But in August Don Barry, then assistant secretary for fish, wildlife, and parks, took a rafting trip down the Colorado River with Taylor and got his ear bent about how the Park Service was abusing the Hopi people. As assistant secretary, Barry had performed brilliantly. Like his boss, Bruce Babbitt, he had proven himself to be a true friend to wildlife; and, also like Babbitt, he had proven himself to be a true friend to Native Americans, people desperately in need of friends. Barry wanted to help the Hopi, and he thought he was doing just that in September 1999 when he reversed the decisions of Henderson, Cook, Canzanelli, and the agency's lawyers.

At a staff meeting earlier in the month, according to documents obtained by the Public Employees for Environmental Ethics (PEER) under the Freedom of Information Act, Barry had suggested that the robbing of eagle nests at Wupatki should proceed on a "don't ask/don't tell" basis, since the tribe had probably been doing it without the Park Service's knowledge. On this last point he was apparently correct. When I asked Taylor's chief of staff, Eugene Kaye, if Hopi practitioners had secretly been collecting eaglets in Wupatki all along, he said he was "pretty sure" they had. "Why shouldn't they?" he demanded.

After the staff meeting, Barry ordered lawyers at the Interior solicitor's office to come up with an opinion, based on law, that would justify the take of wildlife from park units by Native Americans. The lawyers tried for a year and failed. So last September they began drafting a special rule that would apply just to Wupatki. Barry has since left Interior and taken a job with the Wilderness Society, but on January 22 the proposed rule appeared in The Federal Register. Written comments will be accepted by mail, fax, or e-mail through March 23. The summary reads as follows: "The National Park Service has preliminarily determined that under certain circumstances it is appropriate to allow the Hopi Tribe to collect golden eaglets within Wupatki National Monument. . . . This rule would authorize this activity upon terms and conditions sufficient to protect park resources against impairment, and consistent with the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act." The Park Service can no longer find any nesting golden eagles in Wupatki. So how can the monument's golden eagle resource not be "impaired" if the first ones that hatch are removed and killed?

Despite condemnation by certain Native Americans of Hopi eagle killing, Suzan Shown Harjo, who directs a Washington, D.C.–based Indian-rights group called the Morning Star Institute, blames environmentalists for fomenting intolerance of the ritual. "You find a lot of environmentalists who are only too happy to appropriate the words of Chief Seattle, or take the thinking of other great people of native history about the environment," she says. "Anti-Indian racism is rampant among the environmental community."

But confronting Native Americans on wildlife exploitation is something the environmental community is terrified of, lest it be perceived as unsympathetic toward liberal causes such as racial and religious tolerance and the view of nature as ghost-written for Chief Seattle. In fact, some environmental groups--Friends of the Earth, for example--have lobbied successfully for previously illegal Native American take of desperately endangered wildlife, most notably the bowhead whale.

An animal-rights group--the Humane Society of the United States--has vowed to sue Interior if it allows the Hopi to take eaglets from Wupatki, and the National Parks and Conservation Association has made noises of discontent. But the only environmental outfit that has dared to openly confront Interior is PEER. "We haven't seen anything this crude in quite a while," PEER's director, Jeff Ruch, told me. To Barry he wrote: "Your conduct and involvement in this issue have been nothing less than disgraceful. At your September 10, 1999, staff meeting held at the main Interior Building, you expressed the view that National Park Service officials should look the other way while federal law and regulations were being violated by the taking of eaglets and hawks at Wupatki National Monument. . . . Since it is your job to protect both the national park system and its wildlife, your directive on that date violates your oath of office."

Why, all of a sudden, are the Hopi so hell-bent to get official permission to collect? I put the question to Bob Moon, resource and technology chief for the Park Service's Intermountain Region. "I think the Hopi decided that this was a good time and place to press this precedent," he said. "But that's my opinion. The puzzling thing to [Superintendent] Henderson was that he felt there was an excellent dialogue with the Hopi over traditional uses. And he was baffled because in all of the years of discussion and as they were going through general management planning, the Hopi never mentioned eagles. . . . This proposal has stirred a lot of concern about what has been the service's perception of a clear mission. We've searched the existing records for 30 years, and we've not seen anything like this."

The Hopi are also trying to take eagles and hawks from three other park units in Arizona--Grand Canyon, Sunset Crater Volcano, and Walnut Canyon. But if one tribe is allowed to take wildlife from the national park system, how can other tribes, or even Anglos, legally be denied? Radical sport-hunting groups such as the National Rifle Association covet the trophy horns and antlers attached to wild ungulates that roam parks and monuments, often until they die of old age. In 1984 the NRA went so far as to sue the Park Service on grounds that its no-hunting regulation was "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion," but because all Americans--including Indians--had always been prohibited from hunting in national parks and monuments in the contiguous states, the case was dismissed in 1986 by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. A quick survey of 40 park units by PEER last summer turned up 16 requests by Indian tribes to take wildlife. Species sought include eagles, hawks, desert bighorn sheep, Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, mountain goats, Rocky Mountain elk, Roosevelt elk, deer, bison, moose, gulls (eggs), and bear. "I don't know how you stop it once it starts," says Henderson.