Nature and Landscape Management

Nature Conservation 5/2013 — 30. 11. 2013 — Nature and Landscape Management — Print article in pdf

Orel P.: The Golden Eagle – a New and Old Breeding Species in the Czech Republic

staronový hnízdní druh v České republice

author: Petr Orel

Since 2006, the reintroduction project entitled as The Golden Eagles Return to the Czech Republic(Orel & Závalský) has been implemented in close collaboration with the State Nature Conservancy of the Slovak Republic as well as with experts from Slovakia who deal with the Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) protection and management and who are among the best all around the world in this branch of study. After more than a century, a golden eagle chick hatched and fledged in the wild in the Czech Republic, namely in the Libavá Military Training Area (the Beskydy Mts. Protected Landscape Area, Northern Moravia) in 2013. The article presents aims and purposes of the re-introduction and methods used for releasing eagles into the wild. It also summarises the outputs achieved by this time, particularly new knowledge of the raptors bionomics including social behaviour, and sums up a lot of valuable data on dispersal and movement carried out by released birds. The Golden Eagle had regularly nested in all mountain areas and densely forested lowlands in what is now the Czech Republic by the turn of the 19^thand 20^thcenturies. The re-introduction project has never been based on captive breeding, but on taking the second and weaker chick which is usually killed by the older sibling or by one of its parents, from a nest. The young were collected from nests located outside large-scale protected areas in the Žilina Region (Slovakia). Taking the second chick from a nest does not threaten the current Carpathian Golden Eagles population, but on the contrary, it promotes the expanding the Golden Eagles breeding distribution range and making the raptors population more viable.