re: Auburn University pic from 1947

quote:

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Apparently, the Feds made them move the birds because of some kind of regulation.

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I also happened to be there during that whole fiasco. All eagles are considered property of the US government and you have to have a federal license from the fish & wildlife service to house or display eagles (so any zoo that has eagles has to have licenses for each, same thing for all three of Auburn's, etc.)

Well, Tiger had always been cared for by Alpha Phi Omega and lived on campus, and she was officially licensed to the University's Department of Biological Sciences. If I remember correctly there was some turnover in the leadership at the raptor center and he started collecting "evidence" that A Phi O wasn't able to take care of Tiger in the correct manner and he went to USF&W (without contacting A Phi O to see if they could rectify the problems he was seeing) and got the license transferred to the raptor center.

Officially the University was caught by surprise and unaware of the actions until they occurred. There were a lot of rumors though that the administration was involved at least on some degree, as they were moving away from using the eagle as a symbol of the University (even stopped allowing any items to be manufactured that had the old eagle in the A logo or other Auburn marks that featured the eagle) as well as even at this time (1999/2000) they were eyeing the area where the aviary stood for new construction.