DECATUR - For several years, feathers from bald eagles and macaws at Scovill Zoo in Decatur have benefited American Indians.

American Indian tribes see the feathers as sacred for making ceremonial headdresses and fans.

Macaw feathers collected at the zoo are sent to Jonathan Reyman, curator of Anthropology at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield. Those feathers are then forwarded to the Zuni Pueblo Indians and Sandia Pueblo Indians in New Mexico and Arizona.

"It has been part of their religious tradition for more than a thousand years and are used to decorate clothing and ritual objects, Reyman said. "They are also used for making prayer sticks that are placed next to shrines to request blessings for rain or good health."

Reyman also is founder of the Feather Distribution Project that he started two decades ago. He began gathering feathers after a Pueblo Indian man in New Mexico asked him how he could get some macaw feathers. That was in 1970.

At least four times a year, a box of feathers from the zoo's two eagles, Zap and Abby, are sent to the National Eagle and Wildlife Property Repository in Commerce City, Co.

The nearly 15-pound brown-feathered eagles, with their white heads and large wing, debuted at the zoo in 1998.

"It is illegal for any entity or individual to keep eagle feathers or any part of an eagle," said Mike Borders, director of Scovill Zoo, about the national bird that is a protected species. "Our zookeepers look for them in the exhibit each day and send them on when a full box is collected."

Borders said it took a couple of years before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a permit for the zoo to adopt the two eagles from the Alaska Rapture Rehabilitation Center in Sitka, Alaska. The eagle exhibit was made possible by a $10,000 donation to the Decatur Park Foundation - other contributions came from Joe and Ramona Borders and Howard Buffett, who is renown for his wildlife photography.

Sheila Smith can be reached at sheilas@herald-review.com or 421-7963.