Bald eagle tours at DTE Energy's Monroe Power Plant a popular excursion

MONROE — For some people, the arrival of Lent next week means fish fries on Fridays.

For the bald eagles living near DTE Energy’s Monroe Power Plant, fish is on the menu every day, thanks to the relatively warm water where Plum Creek and the power plant’s warm water discharge meet Lake Erie.

Guests of a tour this past Friday got to see eagles fishing and dining on gizzard shad that also are drawn to the warmer water. Visitors on the annual tour on Jan. 27 organized through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service didn’t see too many eagles because of the dense fog, but there was evidence along the creek bank of eagle meals, including talon tracks in the sand where the birds had landed and skeletal remains of fish.

The plant’s location next to the lake creates an ideal environment for the large raptors that like to eat fish, and as many as 200 eagles — maybe more — hang out during the winter months in the wooded area on the south end of the plant property. During winters when Lake Erie freezes over, the warmer discharge from the coal-fired plant keeps the water near the lakeshore open. That gives the eagles the opportunity to swoop down from the trees and use their talons to grab any fish that swims too close to the surface. Even in milder winters like this year, the warmer water draws fish in from the colder water out in the lake.

The opportunity to view numerous eagles in one place has proved to be a popular attraction since the Fish and Wildlife Service and DTE started offering the annual tours in 2005.

Kristen LeForce, an environmental engineer at DTE, and Matt Shackelford, principal environmental engineer at DTE, said the tours started through word of mouth, but they soon had to implement a lottery to manage all of the requests.

There were 770 entries for the 60 spots available this year, said Todd Weston, the Fish and Wildlife Service park ranger who manages the lottery. Those 60 spots are divided evenly into morning and afternoon sessions and are a manageable size for the DTE and Fish and Wildlife Service staff based on how many vehicles and people can fit at the viewing area. The visitors are driven out to the shoreline in vans and extended cab pickups.

The online lottery opens the day after Thanksgiving, where people fill out a form to sign up for up to four spots, then the winners are selected in the first week of January. While people are welcome to sign up every year, the Fish and Wildlife Service tries not to let individuals take the tour on consecutive years.

This year, lottery winners came from as far away as Saginaw, Weston said.

Lara Louzon of Clinton Township said she had signed up for the lottery for six years before winning this year. She said she was surprised the setting was as natural as it is, given that it's next to a power plant.

“I thought it would be more industrial,” she said.

Vincent LaMay and Vicki Morba, both of Trenton, also experienced their first eagle tour on Jan. 27.

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“It was a good experience, depending on the weather. I would’ve liked it to be a lot colder so we had ice out there, because that’s what I was looking forward to,” LaMay said. He brought a camera with a long lens with him and captured photos of eagles and white pelicans.

The idea to offer the annual tours started from the property having so many eagles and DTE having a relationship with the Fish and Wildlife Service, LeForce and Shackelford said.

DTE also donates tours that nonprofits sell as fundraisers.

Dorothy McLeer, a naturalist/biologist from the University of Michigan-Dearborn Environmental Interpretive Center, gives a brief, educational presentation about eagles before the tour groups head out to the viewing location along the discharge channel. She has been involved with the tours since they started. She said the tour shows DTE’s conservation efforts “to restore habitat, recreate habitat or just leave habitat alone.”

She said she hopes that the people who take the tours get “a new appreciation of where they live.”

“Lots of times, people tell me, ‘We don’t have eagles in Michigan,’” she said. “And I say, ‘We have eagles in Detroit.’”

— Contact reporter David Panian at dpanian@lenconnect.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @lenaweepanian.

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Bald eagle tours at DTE Energy Monroe Power Plant remain popular