At one time, the golden eagle lived in a great majority of temperate Europe, North Asia, North America, North Africa, and Japan. Although widespread and quite secure in some areas, in many parts of the range golden eagles have experienced sharp population declines and have even been extirpated from some areas. The total number of individual golden eagles from around the range is estimated to range somewhere between 170,000 and 250,000 while the estimated total number of breeding pairs ranges from 60,000 to 100,000.Rich, T.D.; Beardmore, C.J.; Berlanga, H.; Blancher, P.J.; Bradstreet, M.S.W.; Butcher, G.S.; Demarest, D.W.; Dunn, E.H.; Hunter, W.C.; Inigo-Elias, E.E.; Martell, A.M.; Panjabi, A.O.; Pashley, D.N.; Rosenberg, K.V.; Rustay, C.M.; Wendt, J.S.; Will, T.C. (2004). Partners in flight: North American landbird conservation plan. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY. Few other eagle species are as numerous, though some species like tawny eagle, wedge-tailed eagle and bald eagle have total estimated populations of a similar size to the golden eagle's despite having distributions which are more restricted. The world's most populous eagle may be the African fish eagle (Haliaeetus vocifer), which has a stable total population estimated at 300,000 individuals and is found solely in Africa. On a global scale, the golden eagle is not considered threatened by the IUCN.
Eurasia In Europe, there are an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs. There was a great decline in Central Europe where they are now essentially restricted to the Apennine, Alps, and Carpathian Mountains. The strongholds in the continent are Spain, which holds an estimated 1,300 breeding pairs, Norway, which holds an estimated 860 to 1,040 breeding pairs and European Russia, which holds an estimated 500 to 1,000 breeding pairs.BirdLife International. (2004). Birds in Europe: Population estimates, trends and conservational status. Birdlife International (Bird Conservation Series 12), Cambridge. Other European countries with stable and sizable populations include Italy, with an estimated 476–541 pairs, Switzerland, with 300–310 pairs and Romania, with an estimated 85–130 pairs. The following nations are thought to have golden eagle populations that are increasing: Bulgaria with 150–170 pairs, Denmark with 3–5 pairs (has continuously bred in the country since 1998, but the species might also have bred up until the 1800s), Finland with an estimated 300–350 pairs, France with approximately 390–460 pairs, Hungary with 3–5 known pairs, Ireland with 2 current pairs and Poland with approximately 35–40 pairs.Nankinov, D., A. Dutsov, B. Nikolov, B. Borisov, G. Stoyanov, G. Gradev, D. Georgiev, D. Popov, D. Domuschiev, D. Kirov, E. Tilova, I. Nikolov, I. Ivanov, K. Dilchev, K. Popov, N. Karaivanov, N. Todoov, P. Shurulinkov, R. Stanchev, R. Aleksov, R. Tsonev, S. Dalakchieva, S. Ivanov, S. Marin, S. Stajkov, S. Nikolov, and H. Nikolov. (2004). Breeding totals of the ornithofauna Bulgaria. Green Balkans, Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The following nations are thought to have decreasing golden eagle populations: Albania with about 50–200 pairs, Croatia with approximately 90–110 pairs, England with no known current pairs, Greece with an estimated 100–200 breeding pairs and Latvia with somewhere around 5–10 pairs.Handrinos, G., & Akriotis, T. (1997). The birds of Greece. Christopher Helm Ltd., A & C Black, London.Radovic, D., J. Kralj, V. Tutis, and D. Cikovic. 2003. Red Data Book of birds of Croatia. Ministarstvo zastite okolisa i prostornog uredenja, Zagreb, Croatia. Several other European countries have a small number of golden eagles with less than 50 breeding pairs but with populations that are generally considered stable. Despite their large population there, the golden eagle was considered near threatened in Spain in a 2003 report.Arroyo, B. & Del Moral, J.C. (2003). "Águila Real, Aquila chrysaetos", pp. 188–189 in Martí R, Del Moral JC eds, Atlas de las Aves Reproductoras de España. Dirección General de Conservación de la Naturaleza-Sociedad Española de Ornitología, Madrid. One of the authors of the previous study asserted that the population had increased in 2008 by perhaps 20% in Spain since the last survey in the late 1990s. In Belarus, the population has reportedly declined considerably due to trapping, poisoning and the draining and development of upland bogs.Ivanovski, V.V. (1990). Breeding ecology of the Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) in northern Belarus. Soobshcheniya Pribaltiiskoi Komissii po Izucheniyu Migratsii Ptits Akademiya Nauk Estonskoi SSR 22:130–154. The golden eagle is considered Critically Endangered in the Czech Republic, where it was once quite common in the Beskids and Giant Mountains until logging hit the area hard around the time of World War II. All recent breeding attempts by the species in the Czech Republic are believed to have been unsuccessful.
In Britain, the last comprehensive survey of golden eagles took place in 2003, and found 442 occupied territories.Mark Holling and the Rare Breeding Birds Panel Report for 2003-4 accessed 4 March 2010. A less thorough survey in 2007 showed that in addition to large numbers of territories in the Scottish Highlands and the Inner and Outer Hebrides, there were a handful of birds in southern Scotland and northern England. The population is higher today in Scotland than it was in the 19th century, due to the heavy persecution at that time by sheep farmers, gamekeepers, and collectors. There may have been as few as 190 pairs in the 1950s, though this survey may have not been complete.Nicholson 1957 Between 1969 and 2003 they nested in the Lake District, Cumbria. In Ireland, where it had been extinct due to hunting since 1912, efforts are being made to re-introduce the species. In April 2007, a pair of golden eagles produced the first chick to be hatched in the Republic of Ireland in nearly a century. Forty-six birds were released into the wild in Glenveagh National Park, County Donegal, from 2001 to 2006, with at least three known female fatalities since then. It is intended to release a total of sixty birds, to ensure a viable population. The reintroduced golden eagles at the park produced a pair of fledglings for the first time in 2011. The golden eagle is classified as bird of "High Conservation Concern" in Ireland.BirdWatch Ireland 2008
Fewer estimates are known from Asia and North Africa. A stronghold population is in mountainous Turkey, where the large population included an estimated 2,000–3,000 breeding pairs persist. In Japan, there is an estimated 175–260 breeding pairs, with a total population of approximately 500 individuals. One study stated that food shortages and decreases in suitable foraging habitat are assumed to be responsible for an observed decline in population size and reproductive success in Japan. In the Koreas, the golden eagle is known to be rarely observed and, in 2010, only 10 were seen in South Korea during winter birding censuses. Little is known in terms of population numbers elsewhere in Eurasia, with the IUCN estimating between 100 and 10,000 individuals each in China and in Russia, numbers that suggest the species occurs very sparsely in these massive countries.Brazil, M. (2009). Birds of East Asia: eastern China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, eastern Russia. Christopher Helm, London. In North Africa, the main occurrence is in Morocco, which is estimated to hold 200 to 500 breeding pairs. There appear to much fewer in other North African countries, with small, scattered populations in Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt, areas where no immature-plumaged eagles were observed in 2005.
North America In North America the situation is not as dramatic. One estimate of the number of breeding pairs in the contiguous Western United States that excluded California, South Dakota, Montana and Oregon was 9,387. The state with the largest known winter count of golden eagles is Montana with 13,138, followed by Wyoming with 10,072, Colorado with 7,081 and Utah with 5,993. Wyoming had the highest estimated set of breeding pairs 3,381–4,174, followed by 1,800 in Utah, 1,200 in Nevada and California and Idaho both with around 500 pairs (notably, Montana was not included in these particular studies, although the breeding population must include well over a thousand pair there).Harlow, D.L. & Bloom, P.H. (1989). "Buteos and the Golden Eagles", pp. 102–110 in Proceedings of the Western Raptor Management Symposium and Workshop (Ed. B.G. Pendleton), Scientific and Technical Series No. 12. National Wildlife Federation, Washington.Good, R.E. & Nielson, R.M., Sawyer, H.H., & McDonald, L.L. (2004). "Population level survey of Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) in the Western United States". Reported prepared for United States Fish & Wildlife Services by Western Ecosystems Technology, Inc. Wyoming. In 6 out of 8 Canadian provinces where golden eagles breed, over 10,000 birds were observed in breeding bird surveys. In 1981, it was estimated that there were 63,242 wintering individual golden eagles in the 16 Western United States (excluding Alaska). However, there has still been a noticeable decline in some areas.
Threats Almost all threats to golden eagles are attributable, directly or indirectly, to human activities.Franson, J. C., L. Sileo, and N. J. Thomas. (1995). "Causes of eagle deaths", p. 68 in Our living resources. (LaRoe, E. T., G. S. Farris, C. E. Puckett, P. D. Doran, and M. J. Mac, Eds.) U.S. Department of the Interior, National Biological Services, Washington, D.C. Human-sourced threats include: habitat change, persecution, poisoning (often directed at other species) and collisions with man-made objects. The most widespread unintentional threat to golden eagles by humans is urbanization and human-population growth which have made areas historically used by eagles unsuitable both in terms of habitat and prey availability. Habitat destruction in North America had, by the late 19th century, already driven golden eagles from some regions they used to inhabit. In Southern California and the Colorado Front Range, this has been proved via long-term population and habitat surveys.Scott, T. A. 1985. Human impacts on the Golden Eagle population of San Diego County. Master's Thesis. San Diego State Univ. San Diego, CA. In Western China, the main threats to golden eagles are land development, the use of pesticides and captures for falconry. Fires since 1980 have caused large-scale losses of shrubs and jackrabbit habitat in areas used by eagles throughout the Intermountain West of North America. Wildfires that burned more 40,000 hectares of scrublands between 1981 and 1987 in the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area affected nesting populations adversely. Nesting success at burned territories in Snake River Canyon declined after major fires. Abandoned burned territories have been subsumed by neighboring pairs, resulting in a decreased number of nesting pairs.