Supplemental Feeding Efforts May Be Harmful To Endangered Wildlife
What if conservation efforts harmed the very species they were intended to help? This question recently inspired a research project focused on the Spanish imperial eagle (a.k.a. Iberian imperial eagle, a.k.a. Adalbert's eagle, a.k.a. Aquila adalberti), one of the most endangered birds of prey in the world. There are currently thought to be fewer than 500 individuals remaining in the wild, over half of which live in Spain. Throughout the bird's Spanish range (Castilla-La Mancha, Madrid, Extremadura, and Andalucia, in the central and southern portions of the country), conservationists have invested both time and money into supplementary feeding efforts aimed at improving the health of both individual birds and their entire population. read more