Status and conservation assessment of southern marginal populations of the Golden Eagle Aquila chrysaetos under IUCN criteria

Jesús Bautista-Rodríguez , José Rafael Garrido, Michel Clouet, Miguel Ferrer, Adam Wentworth, Pascual López-López

The Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) is one of the most widely distributed raptors worldwide and is currently classified as Least Concern at the global scale. However, global assessments may obscure pronounced regional asymmetries in population status and extinction risk, particularly at the geographical margins of a species’ range. At the southern edge of its distribution, encompassing the Sahara, the Sahel, the Arabian Peninsula and the Afro-alpine systems of Ethiopia, Golden Eagle populations persist under extreme ecological conditions characterised by hyper-aridity, strong climatic variability and severe spatial fragmentation. Here we review the current status of southern marginal subpopulations of the Golden Eagle, provide updated information on their geographical distribution and confirmed breeding areas, and conduct a qualitative regional assessment of their conservation status under the IUCN Red List criteria. Information was synthesised from a systematic literature review, citizen-science platforms, expert knowledge and targeted field surveys conducted between 1993 and 2026. Confirmed breeding is mainly to a small number of isolated mountain massifs separated by distances that largely exceed documented effective dispersal ranges, with no evidence of regular demographic connectivity. Several regions hold recurrent records of the species but lack recent confirmation of reproduction. Our regional assessment indicates that southern marginal populations consistently meet thresholds associated with elevated extinction risk, including severe fragmentation, very small population sizes and continuing decline. Recent empirical evidence from Oman demonstrates a climate-driven collapse of reproduction beyond a narrow thermal threshold, resulting in functional extinction despite intermittent persistence of adult individuals. This provides a mechanistic framework for interpreting declines across other arid-zone populations. We conclude that the global Least Concern status of the Golden Eagle masks situations of high extinction risk at regional scales and that effective global conservation of the species requires explicit recognition and protection of its southern marginal populations.