BATON ROUGE -- The Wildlife Hospital of Louisiana in Baton Rouge says that the number of bald eagles coming in for treatment has increased significantly over recent years. This year is no different; in fact, it's on pace to be nearly half as much as the previous year.

"20 years ago, 25 years ago, when I started doing this, we had actually seen maybe one to two bald eagles a year, sometimes not at all. Last year, we had 22 bald eagles. This year we're already up to 21 bald eagles, and this is when it gets busier, so we might break 30 eagles this year," Wildlife Hospital Director Mark A. Mitchell said.

It was around 50 years ago that bald eagles nearly went extinct in the United States due to the now-banned pesticide known as DDT, which caused the eagles' eggs to be thin.

"The Bald and Go

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