Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Arizona
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Arizona's breeding population of Bald Eagles is largely isolated demographically from other Bald Eagle breeding populations within North America making it necessary to evaluate the current and future status of this population. The breeding population of bald eagles in Arizona has steadily increased in recent decades yet it is necessary to determine the likelihood of future population growth. Multiple nest-level management programs are currently implemented making it important to determine if continuing these programs is necessary to sustain positive future population growth. This project is being conducted in collaboration with Arizona Game and Fish Department and the Arizona Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. We used multiple long-term datasets for Bald Eagles in Arizona including band-resight data, nest occupancy surveys, GPS telemetry data, and nest productivity surveys to create an integrated population model (IPM). This IPM allows us to leverage the information across all datasets to estimate population demographic parameters and simulate future population projections under different management scenarios.