SIMKIN: Alaska is America’s final frontier, spectacularly beautiful, bitterly cold. It’s 25 degrees below zero at ten in the morning. The sun’s coming up but it’s more like the dawn of time than the dawn of day.

One by one, two by two, the eagles are landing. They gather here at the same time every morning from December to April. There are more bald eagles in Alaska than the other 49 states combined, fifty thousand in all, a proud symbol of a powerful nation.

They are magnificent and the way they look at you is a little intimidating. The United States is an incredibly patriotic place and you’d think the national symbol would be treated with respect, perhaps even reverence, but here some people see the eagles as pests and there’s a bitter battle. On one side the town’s most famous resident, on the other many of the other inhabitants and the stakes are high - for the eagles, for the local economy, for the very notion of eco-tourism which some people believe is a contradiction in terms.

Right at the end of the road, on the edge of Alaska is a tiny town called Homer. It’s rugged and remote, five hours from Anchorage. I’m driving into the centre of a storm.

MAN ON RADIO: I received an awful lot of nasty letters and nasty phone calls about this.

LADY ON RADIO: Oh I’ve been down there and we could just see the bird excrement from all these birds that are there.

MAN ON RADIO: There are a few people in Homer that seem to want to vilify eagles. They like to refer to them as “top predators” or “carnivores” as if they’re something that we should be afraid of.

SIMKIN: I’ve come here to meet Jean Keene, the Eagle Lady. She’s eight-two years old. Every morning of every winter, Jean feeds the eagles in her front garden. She’s been doing it for a quarter of a century.

JEAN KEENE: It is a labour of love. I’ve enjoyed it all my life and I hate seeing anything go hungry. I have gone hungry and I know what it’s like and I hate to see anything go to waste. There’s always something that’ll eat it or utilise it and I can’t lay in a nice warm bed and see a bunch of real hungry birds outside, that would kill me.

SIMKIN: Sometimes she feeds when the wind chill is minus forty. It’s not that bad today but there’s still snow on the sand and ice in the ocean. It doesn’t worry the eager eagles as they wait for Jean - some stand patiently, others jostle and joust for a front row seat. Then breakfast is served. It’s a decent menu – salmon, halibut, herring. Bald eagles are predators, the top of their food chain but in the lean winter months they’re only too happy for a hand out. Their reflexes are as sharp as their talons.

Jean Keene’s breakfast buffet began with just two birds and a bucket of fish heads. Word travelled quickly. Before long, scores of eagles were turning up. Now there are hundreds.

SIMKIN: Did you ever imagine it could evolve…

JEAN KEENE: No.

SIMKIN: … quite as big as this?

JEAN KEENE: Not in my wildest dreams or that I would still be doing it at eighty-two years old.

SIMKIN: The Eagle Lady lives alone in a tiny trailer. It’s covered in eagles, outside and in, mementoes from an extraordinary life.

JEAN KEENE: (LOOKING AT PHOTOS) This is where I dyed the mane and tail red on the horse.

SIMKIN: Why did you do that?

JEAN KEENE: To have it match my hair.

SIMKIN: Your mane matched the horses.

Back in the fifties, Jean was a professional rodeo rider, hanging out with stars like Gene Autry and performing stunts on horseback.

JEAN KEENE: And that’s doing one of the tricks when I was trick riding. This is called a hippodrome stand and this is the death drag. This is what I was doing when I got hurt.

SIMKIN: A split second changed her life. The cowgirl slipped out of the saddle.

JEAN KEENE: My head hit the wall and it knocked me out and put me down on the ground and my back leg got between his two back legs.

SIMKIN: She was dragged around the arena, smashing her leg. Unable to ride, Jean Keene began a new career, hauling cattle in an eighteen-wheel truck. Now she feeds eagles, a job nearly as challenging.

JEAN KEENE: But basically you just have a lot of respect for them. I sometimes have to scold them, you know they get like a bunch of kids but anyway yeah, I say they’re quite the group and they’re a lot of fun to be around but you have to be careful.

SIMKIN: But Jean Keene’s a tough old bird. She last missed a feed a decade ago when she underwent a mastectomy. It’s not just hungry birds that flock to her garden, there are dozens of photographers hungry for a perfect picture. It’s estimated 80% of the world’s bald eagle photos are taken in Homer.

LADY TOURIST: Tears were just coming down my face because the first time you see this, it’s just something you feel and you can’t go home and explain it to somebody. You have to feel it, experience it I think.

MALE TOURIST: Well I’m seventy-nine now and I plan to come back every year as long as I’m able. It’s that special. I just can’t describe it. It’s indescribable.

SIMKIN: Bald eagles are the only eagles native to North America. They mate for life. The birds soar for hours, thousands of metres above the earth. It’s not hard to see why they’re the national symbol. Across the country, eagles grace seals, stamps, coins and monuments. In Homer though they’re also on cars, lampposts and buildings. This is a place where eagles dare to do whatever they like. It’s like something from a Hitchcock movie, the birds have taken over the town and the locals are nervous.

At the pub, everyone seems to have an eagle tale to tell, mostly about missing pets. Around here, bite-sized dogs and cats are known as eagle bait.

MALE AT PUB: There was this one lady that was walking this little Pomeranian about that big and just come down and snatched it right off the dock. Away it went.

SIMKIN: It took her dog?

MALE AT PUB: Took her dog.

SIMKIN: And how did the lady handle that?

MALE AT PUB: She freaked out, just totally freaked out. Just couldn’t handle it and her husband just standing there with his mouth open. Wow!

ANOTHER MALE IN PUB: He went and flew up on top of that church steeple and ate it. (LAUGHS)

SIMKIN: But disappearing pets are only part of the problem. Edgar Bailey has a bird’s eye view of Homer. He tried to start a nature reserve up here but says marauding eagles attack the wildlife.

EDGAR BAILEY (RETIRED BIOLOGIST): I also saw really heart wrenching events where an eagle came swooping down and got a crane before it got off the ground or it barely got off the ground and nailed it. Basically wiped out everything we worked for.

SIMKIN: The retired biologist says Homer’s winter eagle population has increased dramatically since Jean started feeding and that it’s threatening the entire eco system.

EDGAR BAILEY: Their distribution and abundance totally altered and their behaviour completely changed into an outdoor zoo, circus type atmosphere and I think it’s a whole perverted scenario. She is basically well intentioned or certainly was. I don’t know, I’m sure she did this out of the goodness of her heart but ecologically she’s totally unaware. [Showing pictures] This is a real potential disaster.

SIMKIN: He’s drawn up a well-researched and well-rehearsed list of potential problems. By inviting the eagles into an urban area there’s a risk of disease, they could attack a child or hit a power pole.

EDGAR BAILEY: I mean it’s gruesome to see our national bird rendered to a contorted twisted thing like that after I don’t know how many thousand volts went through it.

SIMKIN: Or one could strike an aeroplane as happened in Idaho.

EDGAR BAILEY: (SHOWING PHOTO) Here is the remains of the eagle on the bottom of the cockpit. You can imagine if it hit up there what would have happened.

SIMKIN: For some Alaskans, it’s all too much. Despite incredibly strict laws, eagles like this one are being shot.

EDGAR BAILEY: Some people just you know become vigilantes and they say, I’ve lost my Jack Russell Terrier you know, I’ve lost my chickens, I’ve lost my ducks, my kid’s rabbits…. and I asked one guy point blank, I said how do you handle it? He said well I solve the problem with a twenty-two.

SIMKIN: The injured eagle’s beak will never grow back so it’ll spend the rest of its life in captivity. Every two weeks it has an elegant pedicure. The talons are the size of a human hand but much more powerful.

The Bird Treatment Centre sees a lot of eagles that have been shot.

CINDY PALMATIER: [Bird Treatment Centre] Eagles are messy, their faeces smells bad. There’s lot of it. People get frustrated. It makes me very angry and upset to think that somebody felt like that was the solution. Whatever motivated them to do it, I think that’s a sad statement for the person and they have to live with the vision of what they did.

SIMKIN: There’s a movement to clip the Eagle Lady’s wings, to make the feeding illegal. That’s what Lee Mayhan wants and she’s busy gathering evidence.

LEE MAYHAN: [Eagle Watch Network] Sometimes it’s just really painful for me to watch it. I can’t describe it. Sometimes I just have to stop and go home and I guess like I get to the point of watching that, that I’ve had about enough.

SIMKIN: From this perspective, the eagles do resemble predatory pigeons or perhaps giant seagulls fighting over a chip. Lee Mayhan says it’s degrading and dangerous.

LEE MAYHAN: Scrapping and fighting like junk yard eagles. It’s no different to baiting pit bulls or baiting bears. By last March we had at least twelve we were watching and they had limbs missing, broken shoulders, missing eyes and we know that they do this to themself.

SIMKIN: As Lee’s home video shows, the Eagle Lady has spawned an eagle feeding industry. Tour companies are charging thousands of dollars for photo safaris and then using fish to attract the birds. The images end up in books and posters but no one ever admits the eagles were baited.

LEE MAYAN: I often thought that we should take the baiters and put them behind a big fence and not feed them for three or four days and then maybe throw them you know frozen fish sticks or something and see how they like it and get to fight over it.

SIMKIN: And yet the photographers are a lifeline for the local economy. If the feeding was banned, Homer would become a wintertime ghost town. Shops like this rely on the eagle trade. It sells everything a tourist could need in Alaska.

And what would you use that for?

MALE SALES ASSISTANT: Bear protection.

SIMKIN: Bear protection?

MALE SALES ASSISTANT: Bear protection.

SIMKIN: The bear essentials.

MALE SALES ASSISTANT: Yes, yes I would.

SIMKIN: Would that actually stop a bear?

MALE SALES ASSISTANT: Yes it will.

SIMKIN: Something like, I mean you look at the size of that…

MALE SALES ASSISTANT: Yes it will stop it.

SIMKIN: Mainly though the photographers buy bait, boots and warm clothes – thousands of dollars worth.

MALE SALES ASSISTANT: I would say in our store alone, she probably easily does… the customers spend a good seventy five thousand.

SIMKIN: The Eagle Lady doesn’t believe she’s doing anything wrong, she’s determined to keep going as long as possible despite the fight.

JEAN KEENE: That’s very upsetting to me. It turned my stomach upside down but I can’t do anything about it. It’s you know it’s happening so I just go with it and see what happens.


SIMKIN: Today she’s picking up a truckload of scraps from the fish factory. The birds eat hundreds of kilos a day.

FACTORY MAN: There’s some carcasses, mostly fish.

JEAN KEENE: Okay.

FACTORY MAN: Salmon.

JEAN KEENE: Salmon? Great. I usually cut them the cod. I’ll take the cod and the squid they will eat too.

SIMKIN: Jean will serve up any meat she can get her hands on - even seal, bear and moose.

JEAN KEENE: I’ve gone and gotten them and brought them back and skinned them and then butchered them up for the eagles. One year we had six moose starve to death out here.

SIMKIN: A friend helps with the storing and thawing. Over the years, Jean’s spent more money feeding the eagles than feeding herself, at least twenty thousand dollars - half her retirement fund.

How quickly do the eagles go through a box that size?

JEAN KEENE: They can go through that in less than a week.

SIMKIN: Eagle feeding is being bitterly debated at a state and local level.

MAN AT MEETING: Please ban the intentional feeding of bald eagles.

SIMKIN: On one side the town’s folk who aren’t keen on Jean and want to shut her down.

MAN AT MEETING: The greatest resource that Alaskans have is its uniqueness. It’s a place where wild means wild.

SIMKIN: On the other, the businesses that rely on tourism.

TOURIST OPERATOR AT MEETING: I would ask the people, of those who would recommend these proposals to ban eagles, have they seen those marvellous birds come in? Have they seen people’s reactions? Have they seen the sense of awe and wonder on their faces when they see them?

SIMKIN: The Eagle Lady herself has maintained a dignified silence.

JEAN KEENE: I don’t have a lot of political pull or a lot of money so I can’t, I can only fight it to a certain point.

SIMKIN: The ultimate ruling is a victory for both sides. Eagle baiting is now banned in Homer but there’s an exception for Jean Keene. She can keep feeding her friends until 2010.

JEAN KEENE: I think that’s Lloyd and Mabel. They’re not a nesting pair but they stay together all year round. They’ll make love down on the beach but they don’t go and lay eggs.

SIMKIN: There’s no doubt she loves the eagles, but she may be loving them to death and raising all sorts of questions about how humans interact with nature and the costs of a priceless experience.