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©Richard Katzinger, BirdLife Austria

How satellite tracking is helping us predict the behavior of the unpredictable Eastern imperial eagle

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  • Eastern Imperial Eagle
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With its two metre wingspan, the flight of the Eastern imperial eagle is a striking sight. Equally impressive up close, it wears a regal crown of light gold upon its long brown body.

Unlike most eagles, it prefers open countryside, building its nest upon a tall tree with a clear view. But this powerful predator has become the prey. After decades of persecution by humans, the Eastern imperial eagle is now one of Europe’s rarest raptors.

In the Czech Republic, the Eastern imperial eagle reaches the northernmost and westernmost border of its range. A maximum of ten couples live in the country and our BirdLife partner, the Czech Society for Ornithology (CSO), tries to support their population by regularly monitoring their nests so people do not disturb them. Last year, they tagged two siblings with satellite technology to monitor their journey. After leaving the nest, the siblings flew in opposite directions.

One of them flew straight to the south across the Balkans and spent their winter on the Greek island of Crete. The second eagle stayed in Central Europe. Later, during their spring migration, the siblings both returned to their original nesting site. By monitoring these birds, CSO learns more about the eagle’s movements, but it can also help them detect potential danger. Monitoring tells CSO more about the eagle’s movement and can also detect potential dangers. In Central Europe, the greatest human threat is poisoning – either resulting from accidental exposure to pest-control chemicals laid out for rodents, or from the intentional use of illegal poisoned baits deliberately targeting wolves, foxes or birds of prey.

CSO’s dedicated dog-handler, Klára Hlubocká, and their two dogs Sam and Viky search for poisoned bait as well as the remains of illegally poisoned animals. Sam, the older of the two dogs, was originally trained to search for lost people! In 2018, this dynamic duo found 54 poisoned birds.

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Stichting BirdLife Europe and BirdLife International gratefully acknowledge financial support from the MAVA Foundation, the EU LIFE programme, the European Commission and Vogelbescherming Nederland (BirdLife Netherlands).
All content and opinions expressed on these pages are solely those of Stichting BirdLife Europe.
"Flight for Survival" is partially funded by the LIFE Against Bird Crime project. More information is available here.

Over 25 000 000 million birds are illegally killed around the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and the Caucasus every year. For non-rounded, mean numbers, and minimum/maximum estimates, see: Preliminary assessment of the scope and scale of illegal killing and taking of birds in the Mediterranean (Brochet et al 2016) and Illegal killing and taking of Birds in Europe outside the Mediterranean: assessing the scope and scale of a complex issue (Brochet et al., 2018)

“Flight for Survival” is a BirdLife International campaign managed by Stichting BirdLife Europe to raise awareness about the illegal killing of birds in Italy, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Egypt, Lebanon, Bulgaria and Hungary, and their conservation activities to fight this.” The species storylines for this campaign are heavily inspired by the information available on the migration habits of the selected birds.

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