Hunting Rabbits With Golden Eagles, Kazakhstan

In Britain, the last comprehensive survey of Golden Eagles took place in 2003, and found 442 occupied territories. A less thorough survey in 2007 showed that in addition to large numbers of territories in the Scottish Highlands and the Inner and Outer Hebrides, there were a handful of birds in southern Scotland and northern England. The population is higher today in Scotland than it was in the 19th century, due to the heavy persecution at that time by sheep farmers, gamekeepers, and collectors. There may have been as few as 190 pairs in the 1950s, though this survey may have not been complete. Between 1969 and 2003 they nested in the Lake District, Cumbria. In Ireland, where it had been extinct due to hunting since 1912, efforts are being made to re-introduce the species. In April 2007, a pair of Golden Eagles produced the first chick to be hatched in the Republic of Ireland in nearly a century. Forty-six birds were released into the wild in Glenveagh National Park, County Donegal, from 2001 to 2006, with at least three known female fatalities since then. It is intended to release a total of sixty birds, to ensure a viable population. The reintroduced Golden Eagles at the park produced a pair of fledglings for the first time in 2011. The Golden Eagle is classified as bird of “High Conservation Concern” in Ireland.
Fewer estimates are known from Asia and North Africa. A stronghold population is in mountainous Turkey, where the large population included an estimated 2,000-3,000 breeding pairs persist. In Japan, there is an estimated 175-260 breeding pairs, with a total population of approximately 500 individuals. One study stated that food shortages and decreases in suitable foraging habitat are assumed to be responsible for an observed decline in population size and reproductive success in Japan. In the Koreas, the Golden Eagle is known to be rarely observed and, in 2010, only 10 were seen in South Korea during winter birding censuses. Little is known in terms of population numbers elsewhere in Eurasia, with the IUCN estimating between 100 and 10,000 individuals each in China and in Russia, numbers that suggest the species occurs very sparsely in these massive countries. In North Africa, the main occurrence is in Morocco, which is estimated to hold 200 to 500 breeding pairs. There appear to much fewer in other North African countries, with small, scattered populations in Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt, areas where no immature-plumaged eagles were observed in 2005.
• North America
In North America the situation is not as dramatic. It appears the greatest density of Golden Eagles anywhere in the world occurs in the Western United States and Western Canada. In total, the contiguous Western United States may hold up to 30,000 individual Golden Eagles, with a total of 70,000 to 100,000 individuals estimated across all of North America. One estimate of the number of breeding pairs in the contiguous Western United States that excluded California, South Dakota, Montana and Oregon was 9,387. The state with the largest known winter count of Golden Eagles is Montana with 13,138, followed by Wyoming with 10,072, Colorado with 7,081 and Utah with 5,993. Wyoming had the highest estimated set of breeding pairs 3,381-4,174, followed by 1,800 in Utah, 1,200 in Nevada and California and Idaho both with around 500 pairs (notably, Montana was not included in these particular studies, although the breeding population must include well over a thousand pair there). In 6 out of 8 Canadian providences where Golden Eagles breed, over 10,000 birds were observed in breeding bird surveys. In 1981, it was estimated that there were 63,242 wintering individual Golden Eagles in the 16 Western United States (excluding Alaska). However, there has still been a noticeable decline in some areas.