New Hampshire Logs 100 Fledged Bald Eagle Chicks, a Record

For the first time in nearly 40 years, 100 bald eagle chicks hatched and fledged in New Hampshire, where 85 breeding pairs nested in 2026.

For the first time in nearly 40 years, 100 bald eagle chicks hatched and flew from their nests across New Hampshire this year, according to New Hampshire Public Radio. The state's recovery is stark: in the 1980s, New Hampshire had just one successful breeding pair of bald eagles. In 2026, 85 pairs incubated eggs around the state, per NHPR, which reported the figures from data collected by New Hampshire Audubon. The organization has monitored the population since 1989, the year the first chick fledged in the state after the insecticide DDT was banned by the EPA in 1972 because it was driving eagles to the brink of extinction.

The rebound reverses a collapse caused by DDT, which entered waterways, poisoned fish, and built up in eagles' systems, thinning their eggshells so badly that incubating parents accidentally crushed their own eggs, New Hampshire Public Radio reports. Recovery since the chemical's ban has been slow and deliberate — it took decades to move from a single breeding pair to a statewide population robust enough to fledge 100 chicks in one season. Mickayla Johnston, NH Audubon's avian biologist who leads the bald eagle project, told NHPR's Morning Edition that the story shows that if people band together behind the conservation of a species, a successful conservation story is absolutely achievable.

According to NHPR, the monitoring effort relies heavily on a large volunteer nest-monitor base built up over decades, which keeps the population counts relatively accurate even though some nests go undetected each year. Volunteers and biologists track the big, conspicuous nests that pairs reuse year after year, watching for human pressure from development during breeding season so New Hampshire Audubon and the state Fish and Game Nongame Program can catch problems early. This summer, NH Audubon and the Biodiversity Research Institute in Portland, Maine, banded 20 chicks around the state, collecting samples to test for mercury, PFAS, and lead while gathering data on survival and dispersal patterns that can inform future conservation management.

The threats have not vanished. According to NHPR, one of the big remaining dangers is rodenticide, with a notable uptick in poisoning cases among bald eagles, especially chicks. Continued nest tracking remains important to shield breeding birds from human disturbance, and the banding data collected with the Biodiversity Research Institute is expected to keep informing conservation and management practices. Still, the trajectory is unmistakably upward: a species on the verge of extinction in the state 40 years ago is now fledging a record 100 chicks a year — proof, as Johnston put it to NHPR, that sustained, collaborative conservation works.