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What Efforts Are in Place to Save Harpy Eagles?

The harpy eagle is an amazing bird that's sadly listed on the endangered species list. These eagles can weigh well over 15 pounds and have talons capable of hundreds of pounds of clamping force. Harpy eagles are rarely sighted in their native region of Central America because their numbers have declined significantly there. The rain forests of Panama are one of the few areas where harpy eagles can still be seen. Many people have gone to great lengths to ensure the survival of this awesome bird of prey.

Reproduction Efforts
- Increasing a species numbers may not solve the problems that have put it on the endangered list, but it does increase the species changes of survival while those other problems are being looked into. Increasing the eagle harpy population is the agenda of the Peregrine Fund, which is based in Panama City. The program faces challenges because male and female harpy eagles only produce one baby in a two-to-three-year period. The baby birds will then need another four to five years before they are mature enough to have families of their own. The Peregine Fund focuses their efforts on breeding the harpy eagles in captivity and ensuring that healthy chicks are born.
Parenting Efforts
- The efforts of the Peregine Fund to raise harpy eagle chicks in captivity would be useless if the chicks fail to learn how to survive in the wild. For more than 30 years the Peregrine Fund have been implementing a concurrent project that takes chicks that were raised in captivity and lets them go free into certain areas of Panama's rain forests. These areas are protected and allow the eagles to practice hunting their prey undisturbed by outside threats. Thanks to the Peregine Fund, there are now many eagles that have left the program and are living on their own in the wild.
Education Efforts
- The harpy eagle can benefit greatly from having an educated public that is aware of the serious issues the species faces. The Panama Audubon Society is one such group running a public education program on the importance of saving harpy eagles. This program teaches people how harpy eagles positively benefit the ecosystem. It also teaches the consequences of killing a harpy eagle --- because the harpy eagle now has national bird status, killing one can land a poacher in jail, facing serious charges.
Youth Efforts
- Junior-high school students in Panama have taken it upon themselves to sound the alarm bells for the harpy eagle. Student ambassadors visit other schools and talk face to face with other kids about why saving the harpy eagle is of such importance. Students attending the Brader School of Panama visited four schools in a single school year in an effort to spread news about the endangered harpy eagle.

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