Front Range Nesting Bald Eagle Studies founder Dana Bove spends his days along the Boulder/Weld county line staring through a spotting scope at the bald eagle nests that dot the area.
On any given day Bove might be parked along a rural road, peering through a scope and, every three minutes, jotting down his observations in a marbled composition book.
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He is disturbed by much of what he sees — fracking operations with 100-foot-high walls, a large housing development creeping slowly to the west and what appears to be an oil company preparing to build a pipeline near a nest.
“That was a travesty,” he said during one outing, pointing to a field on the county line. An oil company had hooked a chain around an old-growth cottonwood tree — the preferred home of nesting bald eagles — and pulled it down to make way for oil wells. “It was nothing short of a travesty. I swore to myself I’d never see that happen again in Colorado.”
The birds, of which Bove snapped a photo perched on a pump jack near the former site of their tree, moved several times before setting up shop in another tree close to prairie dogs, ponds and wetlands.
To read the full story, go to the Boulder Daily Camera
