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Guiding local-scale management to improve the conservation of endangered populations: the example of Bonelli’s Eagle Aquila fasciata

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2020

ÀLEX ROLLAN ,
ANTONIO HERNÁNDEZ-MATÍAS ,
RAFEL BOSCH ,
ALBERT TINTÓ ,
ROGER PUIG-GIRONÈS ,
CARLES CASTELL  and
JOAN REAL
ÀLEX ROLLAN
Affiliation:
Equip de Biologia de la Conservació. Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals & Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 643, 08028Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
ANTONIO HERNÁNDEZ-MATÍAS*
Affiliation:
Equip de Biologia de la Conservació. Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals & Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 643, 08028Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Departament de Ciències Ambientals, University of Girona. C. Maria Aurèlia Capmany 69, 17003Girona, Catalonia, Spain.
RAFEL BOSCH
Affiliation:
Equip de Biologia de la Conservació. Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals & Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 643, 08028Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Taller d’Ecologia de la Conservació. Trav. de Trafalgar 15, 08191 Rubí, Catalonia, Spain.
ALBERT TINTÓ
Affiliation:
Equip de Biologia de la Conservació. Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals & Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 643, 08028Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
ROGER PUIG-GIRONÈS
Affiliation:
Equip de Biologia de la Conservació. Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals & Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 643, 08028Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Departament de Ciències Ambientals, University of Girona. C. Maria Aurèlia Capmany 69, 17003Girona, Catalonia, Spain.
CARLES CASTELL
Affiliation:
Diputació de Barcelona. C. Comte d’Urgell 187, 08036 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
JOAN REAL
Affiliation:
Equip de Biologia de la Conservació. Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals & Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 643, 08028Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
*
*Author for correspondence; email: ahernandezmatias@ub.edu
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Summary

Understanding the environmental drivers of demographic processes is a prerequisite for providing the evidence-based conservation guidance and management actions required to address management goals at population level. Human activities, to which most species are not adapted, are having an ever-increasing impact on the environment. Most policies and strategies focus on broad-scale conservation actions and disregard the fact that this type of action may not be adequate at local scale. In addition, even though the main conservation targets are well known, managers and practitioners lack an explicit framework in which to identify the varying requirements of site-specific conservation actions. Our aim was to provide an accurate tool for prioritizing specific local-scale conservation actions for endangered territorial birds. In this study we describe our proposed framework using a population of the endangered Bonelli’s Eagle Aquila fasciata as a case study. We identified the most relevant environmental drivers linked to demographic parameters (occupation, productivity and survival) at local scale shaping the dynamics of the Bonelli’s Eagle population in Catalonia (Spain). This information will be useful for designing specific local-scale conservation actions in eagles’ territories with low demographic parameter values. This is a good example of how applied research and achievable conservation practices are applicable to other Bonelli’s eagle populations and to those of other endangered raptors.

Keywords

Bonelli’s EagleRaptorsLocally-guided conservation actionsEndangered speciesEnvironmental stressorsDemographic parameters
Type
Research Article
Information
Bird Conservation International , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 395 - 409
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of BirdLife International

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