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Article

Local-Scale Movement Patterns Indicate Persistent Urban Avoidance by Airborne Golden Eagles in Western Nevada, USA

by
Justin H. White
1,*,
Collin S. Philipps
1,
Zachary E. Ormsby
2,
Peter H. Bloom
3,
Josh Snook
4 and
Sierra Dinndorf
1
1
Department of Economics and Geosciences, United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO 80840, USA
2
Bureau of Land Management, Washington, DC 20240, USA
3
Bloom Biological, Inc., 13611 Hewes Ave, Santa Ana, CA 92705, USA
4
Entomology Department, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Wild 2025, 2(4), 43; https://doi.org/10.3390/wild2040043
Submission received: 4 September 2025 / Revised: 3 October 2025 / Accepted: 15 October 2025 / Published: 3 November 2025
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Simple Summary

Golden Eagles are largely intolerant of urban environments despite urban colonization by many other raptors globally. We used GPS units to examine local-scale movement patterns of nine Golden Eagles over a two-year period and determine whether they exploit the urban area of Reno–Sparks, Nevada, USA. We found that only 0.17% of eagle positions occurred over the urban area and flight activity was concentrated nearer to the urban–wildland boundary than random. These results demonstrate persistent urban avoidance, paralleling broader patterns across North America, and indicate that the urban–wildland boundary is a key predictor of eagle space use. Our work reinforces the need to integrate eagle spatial ecology into land-use planning and emphasize the urban–wildland interfaces as zones of conservation concern.

Abstract

Despite many raptors establishing urban populations globally, Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) tend to avoid urban areas, including while in flight. The contiguous cities of Reno and Sparks, NV, USA, host a dense guild of breeding raptors (>10 species) but Golden Eagles only nest in trees and cliffs in the wildlands immediately adjacent urban development. We affixed GPS transmitters to nine non-breeding Golden Eagles to monitor their local-scale movements from 2015 to 2017, and investigated whether they use the airspace associated with the urbanized landscape. We found that they moved throughout the wildlands adjacent to, but rarely entered (0.17% of point locations), the urban area. Given that the wildlands around the urban area contain montane forest, sagebrush, and grassland habitats, which support some of the prey that Golden Eagles consume the most (Lepus, Sylvilagus, Otospermophilus, and Marmota spp.), it is likely that they use the wildlands for dietary and nesting resources but avoid the urban habitat itself. Our study provides a snapshot of a single geographic area but parallels existing research elsewhere.

1. Introduction

Raptors have established urban populations globally [1], but Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) continue to avoid urban areas despite the associated attractant of human-subsidized prey (which can ultimately be harmful or difficult to access [2]) and thermal updrafts created by urban heat island effects [3]. Golden Eagles have long conflicted with human activities [2,4], leading to intoxication, electrocution, and collisions with vehicles, aircraft, and wind turbines [5,6,7,8,9]. Urban habitats, specifically, represent zones of both conservation concern and potential human–eagle conflict due to eagles’ large spatial requirements, preference for open habitats, and sensitivity to human disturbance. Alternatively, Golden Eagles may be increasingly drawn to urban areas in the future; in light of research indicating that raptor body mass does not always determine their urban presence, species’ occurrence in wildlands can result in their subsequent occurrence in nearby urban areas, and shy, rural-dwelling species that typically avoid humans have established urban populations once their persecution decreases [10,11,12,13].
Golden Eagles exhibit a broad range of movement patterns throughout North America [14,15] that vary across local, regional, and continental scales [13,15], various temporal scales [16,17], and the dimension of eagle age [17,18,19]. Motivations for eagles’ movements are influenced by internal and external factors, and are ultimately shaped by trade-offs between the environment and eagles’ goals amidst selective pressures [16,18,20]. Research monitoring Golden Eagles’ use of space in North America has been greatly expanded on by the advancements of location tracking technologies [21,22]. This is particularly true of migration habits, home range movement patterns, and habitat analyses, which have direct implications for large-scale conservation and local-scale management [15,17,21,23]. Once limited to in situ field observations or handheld telemetry units and antennae, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) affixed to Golden Eagles can yield databases containing millions of precise and automatically tabulating location records. However, relatively little attention has been given to eagle movement patterns at local scales, and specifically how they interact with urban landscapes. The urban landscape of Reno and Sparks, NV (henceforth ‘Reno–Sparks’) is home to >10 breeding raptor species [24]. Ref. [24] compared nest locations of ten raptor species to urban density levels (quantified by the number of residents, employees, footprint, and height per structure at four spatial scales) and found that Golden Eagles nested only in the wildlands adjacent to the urban areas but not within them like the other species examined. It remains unclear if Golden Eagles use resources within the urban–wildland boundary, or urban airspace, for purposes beyond nesting (e.g., American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) can be seen using the urban airspace for loft). Here, we affixed GPS transmitters to Golden Eagles near Reno–Sparks to identify if local, non-breeding eagle movement patterns indicated the use of the urban habitat and airspace. We framed our study at the local scale, given that Golden Eagles of all age classes engage in local movements (accounting for 80% of the movement types in neighboring California, USA; [17]), and to build upon previous work in Reno–Sparks. We use ‘habitat use’ to refer to the binary measure of urban versus non-urban habitats. We expected to reject our first null hypothesis that Golden Eagles show no difference in use of urban habitat and airspace in acceptance of the alternative hypothesis that Golden Eagles will avoid urban areas. We also expected to reject our second null hypothesis that the distribution of Golden Eagle locations is equal regardless of distance from the urban–wildland boundary in acceptance of the alternative hypothesis that they spend more time nearer to the urban–wildland boundary than random.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Study Area

The study area included Reno–Sparks and the minor urban developments and wildlands within 50 km (39.525694° N, 119.77905° W; 7854 km2; elev = 1371.6 masl; elev range = 1371.6–3048 masl; Figure 1). Reno–Sparks forms the second largest urban area in Nevada, housing ~500,000 residents [25], and is one of two major metropolitan areas in the Great Basin physiographic province. It is situated in the Truckee Meadows, along the border between the Great Basin and the Sierra Nevada. The predominant land cover types outside the urban area include shrub, scrub, grassland, barren rock, and mixed and evergreen forest (National Land Cover Database [NLCD]). Golden Eagles use topographic relief for orographic lift and contour hunting. Ref. [3] identified a strong urban heat island effect that generates thermal lift above the area, which kettles of various large-bodied bird species can be seen exploiting throughout the year. Golden Eagle prey here consists primarily of squirrels (Sciuridae spp.), rabbits (Leporidae spp.), and marmots (Marmota flaviventris) [26,27]. Much of the area’s agriculture is situated on the eastern side of the urbanscape, and is interspersed with urban development and outdoor recreation access points.

2.2. Eagle Capture

Beginning in November of 2015, we deployed bait stations at three sites along Highway 395, between 6 and 32 km north of Reno–Sparks and monitored them for Golden Eagle presence with a Bushnell TrophyCamHD camera (Bushnell Corporation, Overland Park, KS, USA). Bait included road-kill Mule Deer carcasses (Ococoileus hemionus; CA Scientific Collecting Permit #SCP00021). We then used remote-fire bow nets to capture Golden Eagles [28]. Eagles were fitted with solar-powered CTT-1080-BT3 Series GPS transmitters (Cellular Tracking Technologies, Cape May, NJ, USA )affixed as lightweight backpacks (80 g) using techniques outlined by [29] (Figure 2). Six eagles were captured between November 2015 and February 2016, and three eagles were captured in February 2017. Transmitters recorded eagle latitude, longitude, altitude, movement speed, movement heading, dilution of precision, and the number of satellites available in 15 min intervals throughout 29 August 2017 (n = 91,826).

2.3. Analysis

Our dataset comprised two first-year, one second-year, two third-year, one after-fourth-year, one fifth-year, and two after-fifth-year eagles. We combined the airborne eagle locations with randomly generated non-eagle locations for comparison. Our model is a binary response model for the probability that a given location contained an eagle or not. We used a regression discontinuity design to test whether there was a discontinuity in this probability at the urban boundary, which suggests that eagles avoid the urban area, by including a binary variable for urban cover in our regression models. We identified urban cover using the NLCD (30-m2 resolution) and included (1) Developed Open Space which includes mostly vegetation (e.g., lawns, parks, golf courses, recreational areas), with some built materials and impervious cover comprising <20% of the land cover, (2) Developed Low Intensity which includes a mix of vegetation and built features, and 20–49% impervious cover, (3) Developed Medium Intensity which includes mostly built structures and 50–79% impervious cover, and (4) Developed High Intensity which includes apartment complexes, commercial and industrial zones, and 80–100% impervious cover [30]. For the random data representing available locations, we laid a hexagon grid (1-km2) atop the study area and used the center of each hexagon as the available point location. For each eagle and available location, we then calculated surface elevation based on a digital elevation model (30-m2 resolution; units = m above mean sea level; [31]), the distance to the nearest urban area, and whether the location was urban or not. Our final dataset included 5843 use points and 1343 available points.
After constructing this dataset, we followed the recommendations of [32] regarding regression discontinuity methods and estimated a local linear model. A regression discontinuity design includes, in the right hand side of the model, a binary indicator variable where the discontinuity is believed to occur as well as the variable from which the binary indicator is calculated. In our case, these corresponded to our binary variable and the variable for distance from urban cover, which is zero at each urban location. The regression discontinuity design simultaneously allowed for the possibility that eagles’ spatial use varied with their proximity to the urban heat island, and the possibility that there was a sharp change in eagles’ spatial use over urban impervious surfaces. A model containing only the binary variable for urban cover is also meaningful, and is presented for comparison. Recommended practice in regression discontinuity methods involves estimating a locally linear model in order to reduce potential model misspecification due to nonlinearities. In our context, this entails restricting analyses by discarding uninformative data that are far from the urban boundary. Accordingly, we discarded locations within our survey area that were more than 10 km from any urban cover. Because eagle movement patterns are spatiotemporally non-random [33] and observations for each eagle would be autocorrelated, we used clustered standard errors to account for heteroscedasticity and spatial autocorrelation [34]. Nesting and perching produced clusters of observations outside the urban area, which we eliminated as a possible driver of a negative association between eagles and urban areas by excluding eagle locations that were moving <9 km/h if below 20 m altitude. We also excluded locations that were moving <0.9 km/h above 20 m altitude relative to the ground, with the difference in threshold attributed to the possibility that eagles could be moving slowly in the thermal lift associated with Reno–Sparks [3].
Initial models considered in our analysis included one of, or combinations of, (1) the distance to the nearest urban area, or the logarithm of the same, plus 1 m, (2) an indicator variable for whether the point was in an urban location or not, and (3) the surface elevation (m above mean sea level; Appendix A). Optimal models were chosen by the Corrected Akaike Information Criterion (AICc) and Akaike weights [35] (Appendix A). We present the coefficients for the two best models. For comparison, we also examined whether eagles flew directly above urban areas without controlling for distance or elevation, by relating eagle location versus available location to the urban indicator alone. Models including polynomial terms for distance to the nearest urban area or interactions between dependent variables were considered for robustness but are not reported. We consider statistical significance to be p < 0.05. Geoprocesses were executed using ArcGIS Pro 3.4 and statistical analyses using R statistical programming software 4.3.1 [36].

3. Results

Only 12 use points were atop urban cover. Our top-ranked model according to AICc included the distance to urban cover, elevation, and the binary variable for urban cover. The second-ranked model included the same covariates excluding elevation (Table 1). Models including the distance to urban cover outperformed those that included the logarithm of distance to urban cover with otherwise comparable specifications. In all models, the indicator variable for an urban location unambiguously had an significant (p < 0.001) and negative coefficient (Table 1). Our best model (R2 = 0.121) predicted urban data observations to be 85.5% less likely to be an eagle than nearby non-urban points at the same elevation. The binary variable for urban points had greater explanatory power by itself (R2 = 0.050) than either elevation or the log of distance (R2 = 0.008, R2 = 0.024), though distance from the nearest urban area was the most powerful single explanatory variable by a narrow margin (R2 = 0.051). Without controlling for distance to urban cover or elevation, urban data points were 71% less likely to be an eagle than non-urban data points. Statistically significant negative coefficients for distance in all models confirm that eagles were flying primarily in near-urban areas but not directly above (Table 1; Figure 3).
All three of our selected statistical models (Table 1) demonstrate that eagles’ use of the urban airspace was so rare that they were difficult to relate to other explanatory variables. For example, urban observations could not be meaningfully related to fixed effects for individual eagles or to time periods as many of these subsets had only one or zero urban observations.

4. Discussion

Golden Eagles largely avoided the urban area while flying but remained nearer the urban–wildland boundary than random (Figure 3). This pattern is similar to that found by [24], in which Golden Eagles nested near the urban–wildland boundary in Reno–Sparks but remained at extremely low urban density values and generally outside of the urban area. Our findings also support those of [37], who found that migrant Golden Eagles from the neighboring Rocky Mountains/Great Plains genetic grouping [38] demonstrated similar patterns of urban avoidance in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. Our findings also agree with [39], who identified urban avoidance at the local scale using high-resolution habitat data in neighboring California, USA. Golden Eagles in western North America benefit from the open habitats, including sagebrush and grasslands [40,41,42], which are sparse within Reno–Sparks. The rich human-subsidized water and calorie sources provided in urban areas, particularly when juxtaposed with the arid wildlands, make them attractive for some raptors [1]. Golden Eagles could exploit the abundant prey in the agricultural and surrounding areas along the periphery of Reno–Sparks, though the existing literature suggests that agricultural areas can be negatively correlated with Golden Eagle use [40,41,43].
Undoubtedly, human presence, and any subsequent persecution, contributes to Golden Eagles’ urban avoidance, despite indications that some residents are fond of other large-bodied raptors within Reno–Sparks [44]. Additional research in Reno–Sparks showed compositional changes in the prey consumed at Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) nests across the urban gradient, with prey species consumed by Golden Eagles (Cottontail rabbits [Sylvilagus spp.] and Black-tailed jackrabbits [Lepus californicus]) being more prevalent toward the urban–wildland boundary [45]. Considering that mammals comprise the majority of Golden Eagles’ prey [46,47], we suggest that prey availability, and not abundance, may further prevent Golden Eagle from entering the urban area. It is likely that eagles benefit from prey populations spreading outward from denser urban source populations to the wildlands beyond, where [45] surveyed. Additionally, other species benefit from the ecological opportunities along the urban–wildland interface and agricultural areas Reno–Sparks [24]. Great-horned Owls (Bubo virginianus), Red-tailed Hawks, Swainson’s Hawks (Buteo swainsoni), and American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) maintain viable populations in these areas. Great-horned Owls and Red-tailed Hawks overlap in most dimensions of niche space, while Swainson’s Hawks overlap in habitat and diet but nest later in the year. These species primarily coexist in the small patches of agricultural land along the area’s eastern boundary. In the natural riparian corridors within Reno–Sparks, Red-shouldered Hawks (Buteo lineatus), Osprey (Pandion haliateus), and Northern Harriers (Circus cyaneus) also exist [24].
Our results also indicate that eagles do not use the thermal updraft created by the urban area for loft, though they likely use the wind patterns generated by the local topography. A study of Golden Eagle movement patterns in an adjacent population, west of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, found that they moved in flight more on the south- and west-facing slopes and in more rugged terrain [18] due to the prevailing westerly winds and thermal properties of the land and ocean. In turn, we propose that eagles in Reno–Sparks mirror that pattern and use the downslope winds on the north- and east-facing slopes for loft.
Ultimately, we propose that eagles avoid the urban area because of their intolerance of humans, hunting and nesting behaviors, and large body size and spatial requirements [41,48]. It is likely that, in our study, human activities or available food resources drive much of the movement patterns [16], but additional data are needed to answer finer-grain questions in our study population, such as motivations for certain movements at various spatiotemporal scales. Although our sample size was limited to nine non-breeding Golden Eagles, the size of our GPS location dataset provided a sound foundation for local-scale analysis. While broader population-wide inference would require a larger sample, our multiyear sampling period was sufficient to answer our research questions, and the consistency of our findings with other studies suggests that the pattern of urban avoidance is reliable. It is possible that eagles used this urban landscape to a greater degree than we documented outside the duration of our study.
Active eagle nests in our study area, but outside the urban–wildland boundary, have experienced human encroachment. One nest in our study area was situated in a tree despite lying in a well-trafficked Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) location, making it prone to the negative influences of recreationalist encroachment and other activities of OHV users such as hiking, shooting, hiking, or camping [48,49]. However, the nest was well concealed, and recreationalists rarely exited their vehicles at this location. At three cliff nests in our study area, new housing construction breached the 2 km distance non-encroachment buffer outlined by [6]. As the human footprint continues expanding, disentangling the nuances of Golden Eagle movements and breeding ecology relative to urban environments will be essential for management considerations. Based on our work, and that of others in the area [24], we encourage local conservation organizations and land management entities (e.g., Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency, Bureau of Land Management, Nevada Department of Wildlife, and US Fish and Wildlife Service) to enforce existing policy that protects Golden Eagles and breeding raptors, in general, from human activities and encroachment.

5. Conclusions

We used GPS transmitters to provide Golden Eagle location and movement data. We identified movement patterns around, but not in or atop, the Reno–Sparks urban area at the base of the Sierra Nevada. Our findings contribute to a body of literature that is increasingly elucidating the spatial ecology of Golden Eagles across western North America [15,38,50], in which some studies intentionally exclude urban areas [51,52,53]. Considering that Golden Eagles moved largely within the adjacent wildlands but avoided the urban area in our study, our findings reiterate eagle urban avoidance. And, given that the urban boundary had greater predictive power for Golden Eagles’ presence than other variables and that urban encroachment has threatened long-term eagle nesting sites along the urban boundary in Reno–Sparks [54], near-urban eagle habitats should be considered especially at risk. These findings serve as contributing guidance for urban development and conservation management entities.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, Z.E.O., J.H.W. and P.H.B.; methodology, J.H.W. and C.S.P.; validation, J.H.W. and C.S.P.; formal analysis, J.H.W. and C.S.P.; investigation, Z.E.O., P.H.B., J.S. and J.H.W.; resources, P.H.B.; writing—original draft preparation, J.H.W., C.S.P. and S.D.; writing—review and editing, J.H.W. and C.S.P.; visualization, J.H.W., C.S.P. and S.D.; supervision, P.H.B. and Z.E.O. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research received no external funding. NV Scientific Collection Permit #504341 CA Scientific Collection Permit SC-000221 and CA Scientific Collecting Permit for Deer Carcass Transportation #SCP00021.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Ethical review and approval were waived for this study due to granting through the permitting process which supersedes institutional-level permissions.

Data Availability Statement

Data is available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Acknowledgments

We thank Jeff Lincer, Todd Katzner, and Scott Bassett for their insights and contributions to this work. We also thank the permit granters and anonymous reviewers for their contributions.

Conflicts of Interest

Author Peter Bloom is the owner of Bloom Biological, Inc. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript:
GPSGlobal Positioning System
NLCDNational Land Cover Database
AICcAkaike Information Criterion
OHVOff-Highway Vehicle

Appendix A

Table A1. Akaike Information Criterion corrected for small sample size (AICc) and change in AICc for generalized linear regression models predicting whether an observation was an eagle or available point. K is the number of estimated model parameters, WT is the AICc-implied model probability.
Table A1. Akaike Information Criterion corrected for small sample size (AICc) and change in AICc for generalized linear regression models predicting whether an observation was an eagle or available point. K is the number of estimated model parameters, WT is the AICc-implied model probability.
Model CovariatesKAICcΔAICcWT
Urban + Distance to Urban + Elevation55936.2301
Urban + Distance to Urban45951.4815.250
Urban + Log Distance to Urban + Elevation56383.98447.740
Urban + Elevation46482.70546.460
Distance to Urban36485.70549.470
Urban36490.42554.180
Log Distance to Urban + Elevation46558.52622.290
Log Distance to Urban36687.90751.660
Elevation36804.45868.220
NO COVARIATES26857.71921.470

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Figure 1. The study area of Reno and Sparks, NV, USA. Golden Eagle in-flight point locations were collected using GPS transmitters and limited to those <50 km of the center of Reno and Sparks. Urban development was derived from the National Land Cover Database and includes roads.
Figure 1. The study area of Reno and Sparks, NV, USA. Golden Eagle in-flight point locations were collected using GPS transmitters and limited to those <50 km of the center of Reno and Sparks. Urban development was derived from the National Land Cover Database and includes roads.
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Figure 2. Depiction of GPS transmitters (solar-powered CTT-1080-BT3 Series; 80 g) affixed to a Golden Eagle to identify whether they used the urban landscape and airspace in Reno and Sparks, NV, USA. Photograph taken by authors during fieldwork for this study.
Figure 2. Depiction of GPS transmitters (solar-powered CTT-1080-BT3 Series; 80 g) affixed to a Golden Eagle to identify whether they used the urban landscape and airspace in Reno and Sparks, NV, USA. Photograph taken by authors during fieldwork for this study.
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Figure 3. Distribution of the distance of Golden Eagle in-flight used locations (blue) and distribution of the distance of available locations (blue-gray) to urban habitat. Density of locations presented. The origin of the X axis represents the urban–wildland boundary.
Figure 3. Distribution of the distance of Golden Eagle in-flight used locations (blue) and distribution of the distance of available locations (blue-gray) to urban habitat. Density of locations presented. The origin of the X axis represents the urban–wildland boundary.
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Table 1. Coefficients from generalized linear regression models predicting whether an observation was an eagle (n = 5843) or available point (n = 1343). The two best models chosen by AICc are compared with a univariate model including the binary variable for urban cover. Models include standard errors that are clustered by tracking unit.
Table 1. Coefficients from generalized linear regression models predicting whether an observation was an eagle (n = 5843) or available point (n = 1343). The two best models chosen by AICc are compared with a univariate model including the binary variable for urban cover. Models include standard errors that are clustered by tracking unit.
LM: Response ~ Predictor(s)Est. coef.SEtp
Response ~ Urban−0.8550.100−8.535<0.001
+ Distance to Urban (km)−0.0850.017−5.169<0.001
+ Elevation (km)−0.0830.063−1.3230.186
Response ~ Urban−0.8430.101−8.311<0.001
+ Distance to Urban (km)−0.0900.019−4.796<0.001
Response ~ Urban−0.7140.113−6.299<0.001
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MDPI and ACS Style

White, J.H.; Philipps, C.S.; Ormsby, Z.E.; Bloom, P.H.; Snook, J.; Dinndorf, S. Local-Scale Movement Patterns Indicate Persistent Urban Avoidance by Airborne Golden Eagles in Western Nevada, USA. Wild 2025, 2, 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/wild2040043

AMA Style

White JH, Philipps CS, Ormsby ZE, Bloom PH, Snook J, Dinndorf S. Local-Scale Movement Patterns Indicate Persistent Urban Avoidance by Airborne Golden Eagles in Western Nevada, USA. Wild. 2025; 2(4):43. https://doi.org/10.3390/wild2040043

Chicago/Turabian Style

White, Justin H., Collin S. Philipps, Zachary E. Ormsby, Peter H. Bloom, Josh Snook, and Sierra Dinndorf. 2025. "Local-Scale Movement Patterns Indicate Persistent Urban Avoidance by Airborne Golden Eagles in Western Nevada, USA" Wild 2, no. 4: 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/wild2040043

APA Style

White, J. H., Philipps, C. S., Ormsby, Z. E., Bloom, P. H., Snook, J., & Dinndorf, S. (2025). Local-Scale Movement Patterns Indicate Persistent Urban Avoidance by Airborne Golden Eagles in Western Nevada, USA. Wild, 2(4), 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/wild2040043

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