The harpy eagle - among the largest in the world - is running out of space and food, according to a recently published study.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himAccording to a study published last week, the harpy eagle - among the largest in the world - is running out of space or food. It is man's fault, as usual.
It is among the largest birds of prey in the world by size and weight (an adult female can weigh up to 10 kg). It is theharpy eagle and, despite its imposing size, it is seriously threatened due to the disappearance of the ecosystem in which it lives. The harpy eagle adapted to living in the tropical forest millions of years ago: to feed it needs, every day, about a kilogram of meat (generally it feeds on monkeys and sloths) and trees up to 45 meters high to install. your own nest.
Now, unfortunately, deforestation and climate crisis they are seriously compromising its habitat: the tall and robust trees, a favorite of this bird, are also those most commonly destroyed in the lumber industry; moreover, a large part of the forests have undergone a conspicuous process of destruction in recent decades to make way for intensive cultivation or livestock farming: think, for example, that the Amazon rainforest has undergone a reduction of 17% in its size in the last fifty years, with an acceleration of the process in the last decades.
All of this results in the inability for birds of prey to hunt and feed properly, according to a new study that monitored 16 harpy eagle nests located in the Mato Grosso (in the Brazilian Amazon). The observed specimens fed on more than 300 prey, and nearly half of these belonged to one of the three tree-top species. The researchers observed that, in deforested areas, eagles did not change their diet, but simply started eating less (and feeding their young ones less) due to the scarcity of their usual prey. Indeed, in areas where deforestation reached 50-70% of the surface, some small eagles that have died of hunger have been found.
(Read also: Harpy Eagles: Hunters shoot the world's most powerful raptors just to look at them closely)
These shocking results cast heavy shadows on the future of the harpy eagle in the shrinking Amazon rainforest. According to the study authors, considering that harpy eagles have the slowest life cycle in the entire bird kingdom (they live on average up to 54 years and spawn a single eagle once every 30-36 months), their chances of adapting to new environments, completely deforested, are practically zero. This is why it is so important to do something and do it now, before these beautiful animals find themselves 'trapped' in natural oases surrounded by the man-made desert.
Credits: Scientific Reports
Fonte: Scientific Reports
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