page_title: Mountain hawk-eagle
section_title: Status
hierarchical_section_title: Mountain hawk-eagle / Status
context_page_description: The mountain hawk-eagle or Hodgson's hawk-eagle, is a large bird of prey native to Asia. The latter name is in reference to the naturalist, Brian Houghton Hodgson, who described the species after collecting one himself in the Himalayas. A less widely recognized common English name is the feather-toed eagle. Like all eagles, it is in the family Accipitridae. Its feathered tarsus marks this species as a member of the subfamily Aquilinae. It is a confirmed breeding species in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, from India, Nepal through Bangladesh to Thailand, Taiwan and Japan, although its distribution could be wider still as breeding species. Like other Asian hawk-eagles, this species was earlier treated under the genera of Spizaetus but genetic studies have shown this group to be paraphyletic, resulting in the Old World members being placed in Nisaetus and separated from the New World species. As is typical of hawk-eagles, the mountain hawk-eagle is a forest dwelling opportunistic predator who readily varies its prey selection between birds, mammals and reptiles along with other vertebrates.
context_section_description: Though it is not considered a globally threatened species, the mountain hawk-eagle is never more than uncommon to rare locally. It occurs over a rather large distributional range that apparently extends over 19 million square kilometers. However, in estimations from the late 1990s, it was considered doubtful that the density of mountain hawk-eagle was high enough to reach 10,000 individuals, even with the now-separated Legge's hawk-eagle included at that time and all juveniles. High levels of various habitat degradation and deforestation is probably the primary driver of declines throughout the range. In particular, the increasing density of human populations in northern India, southeastern China and Japan are likely to continue to facilitate declines in forest quantity and quality. Likely more localized and minor threats from humans are persecution as occasional killers of domestic poultry. Despite their popularity in Asian falconry, it is unlikely gathering of hawk-eagles for this is a significant problem. Lead poisoning from consuming carcasses of sika deer, left there by human hunters using lead bullets, have resulted in the death of some mountain hawk-eagles. Mountain hawk-eagles may be vulnerable to viruses and helminths as well. Similar threats are faced by all Nisaetus hawk-eagles, with only the changeable hawk-eagle shown to be resilient to human interferences and not in decline at the species level. The Japanese population of mountain hawk-eagles is particularly showing signs of decline. In the 1990s, the Japanese population was estimated at 900–1,000 total individuals and may have reduced even more so today from that figure. As the species is a K-strategist like all eagles, it was feared that the ongoing population reduction of N. n. orientalis might lead to loss of genetic diversity, and consequently inbreeding depression. However, genetic diversity was shown to be still considerable at present.
caption: A captive specimen of the threatened Japanese subspecies, N. n. orientalis.
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