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In June 2023, in Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala, a farmer, on the back of his horse, he was heading to his pasture in the middle of the jungle when he saw a bird he had never seen before. He was on the floor and got up carrying with him a dam that fell immediately. The AVE landed in a nearby branch, which allowed him to approach and take a picture with his mobile. He was very surprised by the imposing of the copy, so much that his hand almost trembled. However, he managed to get a photo. It does not have much contrast, but what matters is that it looks and leaves no doubt: “It is an eagle Harpía,” says the ornithologist Alan Monroy-Ojeda, explaining that “it was surely an immature of two or three years of age, that is to say in the dispersion phase.”
Investigations developed in Ecuador by placing GPS “backpacks” in this species, indicate that at that age the Harpias cannot move away more than ten kilometers from the nest where they were born, giving the good sign that there is still a relica population of this species in Mexico, in the most remote jungles in the country. This is the Lacandona jungle, highlighted as one of the largest tropical regions of Mexico and that, with an area of around 1.5 million hectares, houses an extraordinary variety of flora and fauna.
The finding around the Harpia eagle reinforces the urgency of protecting the jungle in which it lives. “The deforestation and loss of habitat in Lacandona, which in turn is part of the Mayan jungle, represents the main threats for their survival in the country,” says Santiago Gibert, director of the Natural Dimension Organization. It is estimated that in this area more than two thirds of its original wooded coverage have been destroyed and that the population of Eagle Harpía that lives in it is among the most critically threatened of its entire distribution area. In the past, it was present from Mexico to Argentina in a much more uniform way, but today its distribution is fragmented. Even where habitat is well preserved, humans have reduced their prey too much, especially monkeys, lazy and other mammals. Next to the Jaguar, the Harpia eagle is considered the foal predator of the neotropic jungles. The females come to exceed two meters of size and reach nine kilograms of weight.
Silvano López Gómez is part of the group of community monitors Siyaj Chan and was the one who managed to photograph it personally in 2011, in which the last sighting of the species in Mexico documented photographically was considered. As Monroy-Ojeda says: “For a long time the Silvano registration was undervalued. Some said that this eagle came from Guatemala or Belize. In general, its importance was doubted, due to the widespread perception that it was extinct in the country.” Even the environmental protection departments came to affirm that there was no habitat suitable for the Harpías and that they had disappeared from Mexico. “But there were no recent data to support such statements,” he adds.
The recovery of the great predators is often complicated due to their ecological characteristics: the territories in which they move to seek food are very broad, which implies low density, and sexual maturity is already reached with a few years of age, which makes reproduction rates low and the growth of the very slow population.
Monroy-Ojeda’s objectives are very clear. Protect habitat, especially from illegal felling; Locate for the first time a nest of the species in Mexico, and start a project to strengthen the population releasing individuals born in reproduction centers in the wild. “If we manage to reach these goals, it will no longer be so uncommon to see again one of the most peculiar raptors of the planet in the skies of Mexico.”
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