Cook has served on several government commissions and some twenty boards of directors, including for the American Bald Eagle Foundation, the Oceanic Society, and the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. He is a member of the Audubon Society, the National Eagle Center, and the Sons of the American Revolution, and is a life member of the American Bald Eagle Foundation, the American Legion, the International Federation of Fly Fishers, and Trout Unlimited.
For fifty years Preston Cook has devoted his time to all things American eagle. He has amassed and meticulously organized a collection of more than twenty-five thousand eagle objects — from kitsch to fine art, from the everyday to the rare — that reflect American life from the American Revolution to the present.
A retired real estate investor, Cook lives with his wife in Wabasha, Minnesota, on the banks of the Mississippi River, a major flyway for the bald eagle.