The American bald eagle, a national symbol in the United States, has finally taken flight from the threatened species list.

The United States Interior Department announced Thursday it has removed the giant bird from its register of threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Designated as a national symbol in 1782, the American bald eagle's status was upgraded from endangered to threatened in 1995.

Canada has been credited for helping rejuvenate the bald eagle population in the U.S.
(CBC)

"After years of careful study, public comment and planning, the Department of Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are confident in the future security of the American bald eagle," Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said at a ceremony near the Jefferson Memorial.

There are nearly 10,000 bald eagles in the lower 48 states, compared to a documented 417 in 1963, when the bird was on the verge of extinction everywhere except in Alaska and Canada.

Once seen as a nuisance and even a threat to livestock, the predatory bird was hunted by farmers in Maine, who fed their carcasses to hogs. Eagle poison programs were once in place in South Dakota, while the mighty bird was hunted from airplanes in California. A bounty on bald eagles in Alaska gave hunters 50 cents for each dead carcass they could produce.

Through the years, the bald eagle also suffered from a decline in their prey and habitats and exposure to the pesticide DDT— the same chemical that threatened the peregrine falcon in Canada.

Canada has been credited for helping rejuvenate the bald eagle population in the U.S. by providing birds for breeding. The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada currently designates the bald eagle as not at risk.

The eagle will remain protected in the U.S. by state statutes and by a federal law passed by Congress in 1940 that makes it illegal to kill them.

With files from the Associated Press