"A Proposed Luxury Resort Where Eagles Soar Stirs Anger"

"WARSAW, Va. — Twice a year, bald eagles from as far north as Canada and as far south as Florida flock by the thousands to a stretch of the Rappahannock River in Virginia for an all-you-can-eat buffet. They perch in trees atop pale cliffs rising along this river to the Chesapeake Bay and dive bomb the waters for shad, catfish, stripers and even waterfowl.

The gatherings of migratory eagles and the hundreds of nesting pairs nearby make this one of the most important places on the East Coast for bald eagles, according to conservation officials. Yet this bucolic scene is now threatened, they say, by a massive luxury resort proposed for nearly 1,000 acres atop cliffs where eagles wheel in the skies above.

The planned resort on Fones Cliffs has angered land preservation advocates, property owners and the researcher who chronicled the remarkable recovery of the bald eagle, once seemingly bound to follow the dodo into extinction."

Steve Szkotak reports for the Associated Press December 1, 2015.