Photo: Sasse/photo

The Hancock Wildlife Foundation is spearheading a project to learn more about eagles that nest in the Lower Mainland by fitting them with tiny, high-tech backpacks to track their movement.

Director, David Hancock, is an eagle biologist involved in the Bald Eagle Tracking Alliance.

Hancock says so far, they've trapped five birds and released them with the lightweight devices.

"The lower Fraser Valley probably has at least 35,000 eagles passing through it every year," Hancock said. "But we don't know where they come from, or where they go."

The technology is high tech as well, each backpack is solar-powered and downloads GPS data whenever the bird flies within range of a cell tower.

About 35,000 bald eagles pass through the Fraser Valley every year, and researchers wanted to know where they're coming from and where they're going.

The first eagle they put the device on spent its first day hanging around the Vancouver landfill—the same place researchers found it. The next day, it flew down to White Rock. From there, it made its way to Bellingham. Then, the bird dropped off the radar.

A little over a month later, its tracker checked in again. The bird had gone across the Coast Mountains and south to the edge of Washington and Oregon, hanging around a deep valley. From there, it went back up north crossing over Port Moody. The last time Hancock checked, the bird had flown past Sechelt and gone out of range again.

"We really don't know much about the travels of eagles," Hancock said. "A friend of mine trapped nine in Louisiana … by June, every one of those birds had crossed the Canadian border."

The project also helps understand how the eagle population has rebounded. Hancock says he used to only be able to find three nesting pairs in the whole Lower Mainland, but now there are over 400.

"That's what's kept me going all these years," he said. "It's that I've seen at least something positive about conservation. We've changed our attitude."

– with files from CTV