Utilizing solar-powered GPS trackers, researchers and the general public have adopted alongside as Harper the golden eagle traveled to Canada, discovered a mate, raised younger and was misplaced to the wilderness.
Right this moment, Bernheim continues to trace Harper’s widow, Athena, who took off in early March emigrate to her summer season nesting territory in Wapusk Nationwide Park.
U.S. Geological Survey Analysis biologist Todd Katzner stated Bernheim’s work helps function a basis for a conservation plan for the japanese inhabitants of golden eagles.
“The work that Bernheim is doing is de facto vital to understanding the place these birds live, what they’re consuming,” Katzner stated. “If we need to develop efficient plans to guard these species, it’s actually vital we perceive their ecology and biology.”
Final week Bernheim hosted the eighth assembly for the Jap Golden Eagle Working Group, a group of scientists in nonprofits, authorities and academia, working towards the conservation of golden eagles.
For a very long time, scientists didn’t know rather a lot about golden eagles residing within the japanese U.S. Golden eagle populations are considerably smaller than the nation’s image, bald eagles, and are extra uncovered to dangers dealing with small populations.
“One purpose we actually hardly ever see these birds is that it may be actually onerous to select a brown chook in a brown forest on a grey day in Kentucky or wherever else within the Appalachian area,” Katzner stated.
Right this moment, researchers assume the inhabitants that winters in forested areas like Kentucky contains as many as 8,000 eagles, a considerably smaller subset of the North American inhabitants in comparison with the western group.
Threats to golden eagles embody lead publicity from scavenging carcasses left by hunters, and wind generators, however Katzner stated analysis into eagles might assist. If folks can determine at what altitudes the eagles are flying, for instance, then maybe the generators might be adjusted to guard the species.
Katzner stated the group is now within the means of finalizing the conservation plan for the japanese inhabitants of golden eagles.
