Illinois welcomes back the osprey, the subject of a Department of Natural Resources repopulation.
The fish-eating hawk is coming to Anderson Lake near Havana and to Lake Shelbyville after being endangered in Illinois. Wildlife biometrician Pat McDonald says unlike the prairie chicken project, in which the chickens are flown on a plane from Kansas, the osprey are driven here.
“The money is through a federal grant,” says McDonald, “toward trying to get the osprey to a level in which they can start breeding on their own to establish their own population.”
The birds were given to Illinois free of charge from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, where they are a nuisance.