The crowned eagle is one of the rarest and most severely endangered raptors in the Neotropical region. It can be found from southern Brazil to northern Patagonia, inhabiting different forested areas including woodlands and other savannah-like landscapes. According to the UICN Red List, there are less than one thousand reproductive individuals of this species. There are several causes behind this sad situation and most of them are suspected to be human-induced (e.g. habitat loss, electrocution, shootings…). Also, there is a lack of information about the biology of this species, and thus the impact of human activities on its conservation cannot be precisely measured. To shed some light on the biology and behaviour of the crowned eagle, Dr. Sarasola and his team have been attaching GPS trackers to the nestlings of the crowned eagles during the last decade. 

 

The trip started when one of those GPS trackers showed that a four-year-old individual was staying in the same place without doing any movements for some days. This is usually a bad signal, as they usually flight rather long distances to find food or breeding sites. Therefore, to see what was happening, we traveled to a place close to Limay-Mahuida (something similar to clean mountains in Mapuche; Fig. 2) to find this "lost" individual.