[/av_textblock] [av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=” custom_class=”] The Tennessean
July 15, 2014
Tennessee’s treetops are home to hundreds of Bald Eagles, and on Tuesday the state’s leading wildlife advocates flocked to Bells Bend Park to honor a man who helped make that possible.
[/av_textblock]
[av_video src=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wjW69hjn5o’ format=’16-9′ width=’16’ height=’9′]
[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=” custom_class=”]
About 150 admirers gathered to celebrate Bob Hatcher, who spearheaded the state’s Bald Eagle recovery efforts for decades. “Year after year after year,” Hatcher helped to raise and release young eagles, or eaglets, into the wild, according to Gary Myers, former executive director of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
“There’s nobody that could have done more,” Myers said.
When Hatcher started his work with the TWRA in the 1980s, there weren’t any known Bald Eagle nests in Tennessee. In January, he counted 143 successful nests in an annual status report he helped compile as a volunteer.
In the same report, Hatcher wrote that 353 eaglets had been released to the wild since 1980. On Tuesday another eaglet was added to that tally, when a bird named ‘Hatcher’s Legacy’ was released in the lush park tucked along the Cumberland River in West Nashville.
[/av_textblock]