(gentle music) - This is from the Audubon Society of New York State.

Recognition of conservation efforts, protection and conservation of the bald eagle.

I was always very interested in nature ever since I was a little boy.

One time I thought I wanted to be a butterfly doctor.

Finding out there wasn't such a thing.

Those are all real license plates.

That's from my motorcycle.

Those are all from vehicles, yeah.

I always knew I wanted to go into conservation and even in my high school yearbook said headed for a career in conservation, and sure enough was lucky enough to get hired by the state of New York.

This is from the National Park Service Upper Delaware Council Distinguished Service Award for work on the upper Delaware River and bald eagle work.

And around 1974 when the endangered species money came through my boss came to me and said, we got an opening in the big game project dealing with bears.

Or we have an opening in the brand new endangered species program dealing with bald eagles.

And what do you think I chose?

Somewhere around 2015 an eagle I banded as a nestling in 1977, was recovered dead at 38 years old, which is a longevity record, known longevity for a bald eagle.

A lot of this, you know, eagles create their own good vibes.

You know, like I said, I was just lucky to be part of it.

Well, before I retired in 2010, I was in charge of New York State's endangered species program, a large portion of which was spent on bald eagle restoration in New York State beginning back in the early 1970s.

You can just see the edge of the nest just to the left of this big stem of this tree.

Tough to see if there's anything going on right under the nest here.

But these cases, we usually just have to climb and find out what's up there.

(birds chirping) - We're gonna be banding eagles, the eaglets today.

The purpose of that is so we can track where they go.

We know that these birds can live for decades and travel, you know, huge distances so this is really helpful.

- You are on belay.

- Ready, alright.

Headed up.

- Good climb.

(birds chirping) When we got going in in the early 1970s, we knew that bald eagles were in a critical state.

(gentle music) Eagles were never listed as endangered or threatened in Alaska because the habitat remained so they had plenty of eagles to go around.

So they graciously agreed, yes, you could come up and take some of our eagles.

(gentle music) Then it would be a matter of actually getting young eaglets to use in this hacking process, which literally means hand rearing to independence.

(gentle music)