Bald eagle lovers are flying high as Congress heads into its lame-duck session, with the potential of House action on a bill officially designating the longtime symbol of the United States as the national bird.
“I’m optimistic it’s going to be pushed through, and hopefully President Biden will have a signing ceremony,” said Preston Cook, a lifelong collector of eagle memorabilia who co-leads the National Bird Initiative, an effort launched this year to correct what eagle enthusiasts say is a 242-year-old legislative oversight.
The chief lobbyist for the initiative, Jana McKeag, is hopeful about the bill’s prospects but cautioned that anything could happen amid the turmoil of a new administration incoming and a new Congress preparing to take office in January.
“In a perfect world it would be an ideal bill to just breeze right through,” McKeag said. “But we don’t have a perfect world.”
A bill to formally name the bald eagle as the national bird did breeze through the Senate this summer. The measure — authored by Democrat Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Republican Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, senators from states with large eagle populations — was approved by unanimous consent on July 29.
An identical bill sponsored by Minnesota Republican Rep. Brad Finstad has seven Republican and six Democratic co-sponsors. House leaders have yet to say whether they will take up the proposal before the new Congress.
“Leadership is very much aware of the bill. They’re supportive of the bill,” McKeag said. The backers would like to see it move as a stand-alone bill, but there is also talk of attaching it to other must-pass legislation, such as the annual defense authorization bill, she said.
One thing that might work in the bill’s favor is there could be a move to clear the decks of pending legislation so President-elect Donald Trump can start with a clean slate with the new Congress in January, McKeag added.
Finstad’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the bill, with decisions about how to proceed still being made by House leaders.
The bald eagle has been the symbol of the nation since June 20, 1782, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Great Seal of the United States featuring an eagle with an olive branch in one talon and 13 arrows in the other to represent the first states in the union.
But Congress never officially declared the bald eagle as the national bird, an oversight Cook discovered as he was writing a book, “American Eagle: A Visual History of Our National Emblem,” that features some of the more than 40,000 items from his collection of eagle memorabilia now on display at the National Eagle Center near his home in Wabasha, Minn. University of Florida history professor Jack E. Davis made the same discovery as he was researching a book published in 2022, “The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird,” and joined forces with Cook to establish the National Bird Initiative.
“We do have a national mammal [the American bison], a national flower [the rose] and a national tree [the oak], all done through legislation,” McKeag said. “The eagle, everybody just assumes it’s our national bird — but no. So let’s check that box.”
McKeag and Cook both said they hope the bill will pass on its own and that President Joe Biden holds a signing ceremony before he leaves the White House in January.
“It would be wonderfully symbolic,” McKeag said.
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