Animals: Eagle Thinning

"The golden eagle," cried Idaho's State Game Warden Amos Eckert last month, "is wild life's Public Enemy No. 1."

What had roused the warden were reports sent down from central Idaho's wild Salmon River and Sawtooth Mountain country. One hunter wrote that he had found a dozen sets of lambs' feet in one golden eagle's nest, three sets of goats' feet in another, seen eagles kill a 2-year- old mule deer. For years Idaho has paid a $1 bounty on golden eagles. Now Warden Eckert ordered his predator exterminators to begin a systematic campaign against them.

Down on him promptly fluttered a rain of protests. Bird-lovers argued that the golden eagle's chief prey is such small fry as rabbits, squirrels and woodchucks, that it feeds on larger animals only when they are dead or dying.

Last week, however, Warden Eckert gave the nation's birdfolk fresh alarm by proposing to step up his campaign, declaring: "My hunters will get new orders to shoot every golden eagle they see, destroy all the nests and young they can find. If necessary, new hunters will be sent out." Four days later Warden Eckert's term expired and Democratic Governor Barzilla W. Clark replaced him with a deserving Democrat who, having had no experience with wild life, was expected to let eagles prey in peace.