MIAMI, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- It's a familiar scenario after every big hurricane hits land: He comes home and discovers that his home is no longer there.
There is lots of confusion and lots of dismay.
But this time, we're not talking about people. We're talking about the symbol of our country. Now the bald eagle is becoming a symbol of the environmental damage caused by the four huge hurricanes that hit Florida in August and September.
Many of the bald eagles that migrate to Florida each year are finding that hurricanes have blown away their nests or the trees on which they were built.
Biologists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission believe that about half of the state's bald eagles' nests were destroyed by the four hurricanes that hit the state this year.
The biologists said some of the nests were blown away and others were destroyed when tree limbs on which they were built fell, or the entire tree was uprooted.
Many migrating eagles have arrived in Florida and are looking for the nests some of them have used for decades.
Some of those that are missing nests might rebuild, or they could skip a season of nesting.
At least 473 eagle nests were in the path of Hurricane Charley, which started the onslaught Aug. 13. The same areas were later hit by Jeanne and Frances, which both crossed the path left by Charley.
Ivan was a solo strike, hundreds of miles away in the state's panhandle.
The worst damage to eagle's nests was in Polk, Osceola, Sarasota, Charlotte and Brevard counties. Some of them were hit by all three storms.
One nest was lost in Volusia County.
Barbara Samler of Deland returned to one nest after the hurricanes and found the nest had come down because the tree had been hit by lightning.
She was watching when the eagles returned to the tree, she told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
"I don't think they've decided what to do. They look up there, they fly up there, it's as if they can't let go of it," she said. "They don't want to go away from that location because it's been good fishing for them."
"The storms are taking some kind of toll," said Henry Cabbage, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "We're still evaluating.
"It defoliated the trees, and that causes changes where animals live and next. They took a pretty good toll on sea turtles."
But he said it's not as though all this was new.
"The bottom line is that in Florida, wildlife has adapted over time to recover from things like this. This has been going on for centuries," Cabbage said.
But he pointed out that over more recent years, exotic wildlife has been arriving in Florida, and the intruders don't have the centuries of evolution to defend against the effects of hurricanes.
That can be bad for the animals themselves, and for everything around them.
In a memo describing potential damage from exotics, Don Schmitz of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection warned of exotic animals now free in friendly Florida environs.
"There has been a massive release of exotic pets from homes (reptiles, amphibians, fishes, birds and roadside zoo animals) into Florida's urban and natural areas," the memo said.
He said the impact is still not known in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, which devastated south Florida 12 years ago.
"Remember all the monkeys that were freed from the Metro-Dade Zoo after Andrew? Will they survive and form reproducing populations? Once again, time will tell," Schmitz said.
Schmitz also said loss of tree canopies in tropical hardwood hammocks and closed forests will allow more light to reach the forest floor.
"If there are invasive exotic plants present, particularly invasive vines -- air potato, Old World climbing fern, kink vine ... they will likely spread quickly, preventing the canopy from regenerating," he said.
He said in pine forests in south Florida, pine forests Brazilian pepper will likely increase its range while cogon grass "will likely be the invader in central Florida."
Schmitz also said invasive plants like hydrilla and hyacinths were uprooted or otherwise displaced and threatened dams and bridges by forming biological dams after the storms.
Turtle nesting turned out a disaster, compared with the eagles' problems, which are more of a nuisance.
At Canaveral National Seashore, about turtle 1,000 nests were lost to the storms.
The impact of the storms wasn't limited to nests. Hatchlings and adult turtles also had their difficulties.
The Marine Science Center at Ponce Inlet, which treats sick and injured turtles, said it was busy after the storms with half-drowned loggerheads and weakened hatchlings.
Between May 1 and Oct. 31, the official turtle nesting season, Volusia County counted 240 nests, down from last year's 399. Sea-turtle watchers said some turtles hatched before the hurricanes hit, but more than 100 nests were destroyed.
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