Spanish Imperial Eagle

Spanish Imperial Eagle: Species Facts

Range & Habitat

The Spanish imperial eagle breeds only in the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain it breeds in five regions — Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Extremadura and Madrid — and in March 2023 MITECO reported territories in 21 provinces. It returned to breed in Portugal in the 2000s, as the Spanish population recovered, mainly in the Alentejo and in areas bordering Extremadura. Young birds wander widely before settling: the 2018 Iberian strategy records sightings, mostly of birds in their first year, in Morocco, Algeria and the Sahel, in Senegal and Gambia.^[1][2]

Its classic habitat is Mediterranean woodland of holm oak and cork oak alternating with pasture where rabbits are abundant, as described in an EU LIFE project of the 1990s. The 2003 national breeding bird atlas found it from mountain pinewoods to coastal dunes and marshes, with the highest densities on gentle or flat ground with substantial but not dominant tree cover and plenty of rabbits. As the population has grown, the 2018 strategy notes, more pairs are breeding in dehesa-like, more humanised landscapes and in lowland pinewoods rich in rabbits, and even in farmland and steppe, where they nest in isolated trees, along rivers and streams or in small islands of woodland. More than 80 % of nests are on private land.^[1][3][6]

Prey. Its diet is based on the rabbit, which made up 50–70 % of the prey taken according to the 2003 atlas; the Junta de Andalucía (2026) says rabbit can reach 70 % of its food where it is abundant, completed with crows and their relatives, pigeons, hares, carrion and reptiles. That ties the conservation of the eagle closely to that of the rabbit: where rabbits are scarce or have gone, breeding success is much lower and pairs usually raise only one chick.^[3][4]

In March 2023 MITECO reported that the coordinated census of 2021–2022 counted at least 841 breeding pairs in the Iberian Peninsula: 821 in Spain and an estimated 20 in Portugal, 53 % more than in 2017. Castilla-La Mancha held 396 territories in 2022, 47 % of the Spanish total, with 212 in Toledo alone; Andalusia had 136 pairs, Castilla y León 131, Madrid 83 and Extremadura 75. MITECO said a new full census was planned for 2023; no later national figure was found in the sources consulted.^[2]

More recent regional counts: the Junta de Andalucía reported 191 breeding pairs in Andalusia in 2026, in five nuclei: Sierra Morena, Doñana, Cádiz, the Béticas of Granada–Jaén and the Seville countryside.^[4]

Earlier figures, for the record: the first national census, in 1974, counted only 39 pairs; 14 years later there were 104, and the population went on growing at an average of 6 % a year (MITECO, 2023). In 2001, when the first national strategy was approved, Spain had 152 territorial pairs; in 2017 there were around 520 occupied territories in Spain and 16 in Portugal (MITECO, 2018).^[1][2]

Threats

Electrocution on power lines. Between 1989 and 2012, 270 eagles — more than half of all deaths not due to natural causes — were electrocuted on dangerous pylons, according to the 2018 strategy, and in March 2023 MITECO said electrocution has been, and still is, the species' main cause of non-natural death.^[1][2]

Poisoned bait, which is illegal. MITECO's 2023 release records 195 eagles found dead from poisoned bait between 1992 and 2017; regional action plans and investment in prevention and prosecution have reduced this threat proportionally in recent years, but the 2018 strategy still describes it as a very important risk factor.^[1][2]

Other threats named by MITECO in 2023: illegal persecution such as shooting, poisoning from eating prey with high levels of heavy metals, mainly lead, and new infrastructure that could undermine the recovery. The 2018 strategy adds wind farms as a recent potential cause of death — the first eagle killed by a wind turbine was recorded in Cádiz in 2012 — and repeated disturbance near nests from farming and forestry work, which can cause chicks to die.^[1][2]

Fewer rabbits. Rabbit populations in Spain fell sharply from the 1990s to the mid-2000s, through rabbit haemorrhagic disease and myxomatosis and changes in land and game management, which reduced the eagle's food and its breeding output in several areas. The 2018 strategy warns that new strains of these diseases keep appearing and could cause another collapse in rabbit numbers.^[1]

Habitat change. In Portugal, the 2018 strategy reports a recent decline in habitat quality as large areas of suitable land are turned into irrigated crops, and MITECO (2023) calls for protecting critical areas from habitat transformation by energy developments.^[1][2]

Conservation Status & Work

Aquila adalberti: Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List (global assessment of the species, published in 2022).^[8]

In Spain it is listed as «en peligro de extinción» (in danger of extinction) in the Catálogo Español de Especies Amenazadas (Real Decreto 139/2011), and the Junta de Extremadura states that it has the same category in Extremadura's regional catalogue. It is also in Annex I of the EU Birds Directive 2009/147/EC.^[1][5][7]

The Strategy for the Conservation of the Spanish Imperial Eagle in Spain and Portugal was approved by Spain's Conferencia Sectorial de Medio Ambiente on 26 July 2018, drawn up by Portugal's Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas, MITECO and the five regions; it follows a first national strategy of 2001. By 2018 four of the five regions had approved recovery plans; Extremadura's was approved by an order of 6 June 2005.^[1]

Making power lines safe has been fundamental to the recovery, MITECO said in 2023: since Real Decreto 1432/2008 on protecting birds from collision and electrocution on high-voltage lines, public administrations invested at least €30 million in 2008–2020, to be followed by another €60 million in 2021–2026 from the EU's Next Generation funds. In the 1990s, EU LIFE funding gave an important boost: the Castilla-La Mancha part of a coordinated LIFE programme in the five regions (LIFE95 NAT/E/000593, 1992–2001) modified 4,726 pylons on 192 lines, restored rabbit habitat and proposed three new Special Protection Areas.^[2][6]

On the ground, recovery plans regulate human activities within at least 500 m of nests, supplementary feeding has been given to pairs in territories short of natural prey, and conservation organisations and administrations have signed agreements with the private landowners on whose land most nests lie. Every region with the species, and Portugal, runs annual population monitoring, coordinated in a Spanish–Portuguese working group of environmental administrations advised by experts.^[1][2]

In Extremadura, three young eagles rescued in July 2023 because they were struggling to survive in the wild were taken into the Los Hornos wildlife recovery centre in Sierra de Fuentes (Cáceres) and the AMUS centre in Villafranca de los Barros; in September 2023 the Junta de Extremadura released them in Monfragüe National Park, fitted with GPS transmitters to follow their dispersal.^[5]

Despite the recovery, MITECO said in 2023 that monitoring and research, investment in fixing power lines, protection of critical areas and work with rural land users all still need to continue; Spain and Portugal, the only countries where it breeds, bear the greatest responsibility for its conservation worldwide.^[2]