National Eagle Repository

Orders are filled on a first come, first served basis, with a waiting list of about 6,000 applicants for approximately 2,000 eagles the repository receives, on average, each year.

Conservation agencies, zoological parks, rehabilitators, and others who may legally possess and transport deceased eagles and their parts are encouraged to send them to the repository so they may be used by Native Americans.

In the early 1970s the National Eagle Repository was operated out of Pocatello, Idaho and in the 1980s distribution was out of the USFWS Forensic Lab in Ashland, Oregon.

[2] In 1985 a lawsuit over the prosecution of Dwight Dion Sr., a member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, for poaching and selling of four bald eagles reached the Supreme Court.

In United States v. Dion the court upheld the conviction and confirmed that historic treaty rights could be amended and abrogated by legislation of Congress.