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About the author
David H. Ellis grew up in eagle country in the Rocky Mountain West and was fascinated by golden eagles from early childhood. His Ph.D. dissertation is a monograph on golden eagle behavior. He has lived in 11 U.S. states and has visited all of them, as well as 50 nations, generally in pursuit of bird (mostly raptor) research. These travels involved work with harpy eagles in Central and South America, bald and golden eagles in Alaska and Canada, and golden eagles in the U.S., Japan, Siberia, and, most of all, Mongolia. His falcon research focused on pallid falcons in Patagonia, saker falcons in Mongolia, and peregrine falcon populations in Arizona. His publications exceed 300 articles, chapters, or books, including three volumes on crane research.Jesús Bautista-Rodríguez was drawn to wildlife by the age of 4 and had his first encounter with a Golden Eagle at the age of 6 while playing with amphibian larvae. Since then, he has been in contact with this and other species of great eagles to this day. He never had interest in a university, thinking instead that real knowledge came from books already written and, above all, from long days a field. For this reason, he accumulated more than 100,000 hours in the field observing these magnificent birds. This led him into close contact with biologists and university scientists. Today, he feels most fortunate to have been working for more than 25 years as a professional with endangered species. The culmination of this effort being, together with the “Ellis family,” the production of this book, one of the largest works on the great eagles ever produced.
As a naturalist, he specializes in population monitoring and ecology of large eagles in Iberia and northern Africa. Most of this effort is on spatial ecology of the Golden Eagle in relation to man, with special attention to non-natural mortality and populations in marginal environments. In addition, he is the author or co-author of 30 scientific publications in national and international magazines and national outreach. He also has several book chapters related to the Golden Eagle, and is the author of a bilingual book titled Golden Eagles and Humans.
Professionally, he works on the Recovery and Conservation Plan for populations of large Eagles at the Andalusian Environment and Water Agency, Department of the Ministry of Sustainability, Environment and Blue Economy of the Junta de Andalucía. He is also a presidential member and project director of the NGO Wilder South (Society for the Study, Observation and Conservation of Mediterranean Biodiversity), an entity dedicated to monitoring threatened large raptors in southern Iberia, with collaborations in northern, eastern, and southern Africa, especially isolated populations in marginal environments. His travels in search of marginal Golden Eagle populations, and other large tropical eagles have taken him to the Philippines, Morocco, Tunisia, The Gambia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Namibia, South Africa, and more.
