Rescue crews assist zoo experts in time of need for bald eaglets in southwest Miami-Dade

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Bald eaglets living in a nest in southwest Miami-Dade needed some help over the weekend when one got tangled in some fishing wire.

The bald eagles have become internet stars, with a live streaming camera allowing people watch their journey over the past five months.

Against some environmental odds, bald eagles Ron and Rita lost an eaglet, and a storm blew out their nest, prompting some help from Zoo Miami’s Ron Magill and Lloyd Brown from Wildlife Rescue of Dade County.

“Let’s build a platform so the next nest they build is more secure, and we did,” said Magill. “Eagle experts said, ‘Oh they will never come back to that platform, now they are going to be afraid of it.’ They were wrong.”

Since then, Ron and Rita have laid three eggs, two hatched successfully named R1 and R2.

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When Magill looked at the live stream on Saturday, he noticed something terribly wrong. When R2 wanted to fly away from the nest for the first time, a fishing line was trapping her in her nest and she couldn’t fly.

Suddenly it was a race against time.

“That fishing line could not only cut off the circulation, tear her foot off, it could eventually kill her,” said Magill.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue crews were called in to assist, going up in their bucket.

“We had to make an extreme decision to go up and to try to free her and that’s something you do as a last-ditch effort to save her life,” Magill said. “She saw us, and when she saw us come up with the bucket, she was frightened so much that she did a huge leap and a big wing beat and she snapped the line.”

R2 managed to fly, but forcefully. The problem was that she still had the line attached to her foot, so she was sought out again, brought in to remove the line, and kept for observation before Miami-Dade crews had to go out a second time with the bucket and bring her back up to her nest.

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Now the concern is, when will she fly on her own.

“Hopefully as time goes on, she will fledge soon and that will hopefully be the end of this saga of R1 & R2,” said Magill.