Status of Serpent and Booted Eagles

Serpent and booted eagles as groups are generally imperilled. Eagles within these groups often have small population sizes, limited distribution (sometimes confined to islands), and occupy habitats (especially tropical forests in Asia and Africa) under threat. In addition, the ecology of many of the species in these groups is not well known and this undermines conservation efforts. Given this situation, members of the Eagle Conservation Alliance undertook a review of these groups.

As a first step in understanding which species should be made a conservation priority we aimed to assemble the dispersed data on population size and conservation status, main conservation threats and main on-going conservation activities. Because of new taxonomy resulting from recent genetic work, we made some effort to clarify species nomenclature within the context of the main aims of assembling the data. We review information from a variety of sources for 61 eagle species in the (current and historical) genera: Eutriorchis, Spilornis, Pithecophaga, Terathopius, Circaetus, Dryotriorchis, Nisaetus, Stephanoatus, Spizaetus, Hieraaetus, Polemaetus, Lophaetus, Lophotriorchis, Ictinaetus, and Aquila. In reviewing all species in these groups we sought also to identify species where relatively low cost solutions to conservation problems might be applied.

The authors intend to publish a peer-reviewed paper on this topic, using information in this manuscript (booted_serpenteagles_McGradyetal2010.pdf). We recognize that there are gaps in the information. We are working to fill those gaps and ensure that the manuscript we submit for publication will be up to date, however we thought it important to make this information available in case it might be put to good use to conserve eagles.

THIS MANUSCRIPT HAS NOT BEEN PEER-REVIEWED. USE THE INFORMATION WITHIN WITH CAUTION. THE STATUS OF SOME SPECIES IS CHANGING AND SO OLDER DATA MAY BE LESS RELIABLE. THE DATA PRESENTED HEREIN WERE “CURRENT” IN MID 2009. CITE THIS MANUSCRIPT AS “UNPUBLISHED DATA”.

booted_serpenteagles_McGradyetal2010.pdf