North America's biggest hawk needs some help

North America's largest hawk can be seen flying overhead in Southern Alberta's Grasslands.

Even though the Ferruginous hawk holds the title of largest North American Hawk, it has been on the endangered list in Alberta since 2006.

That came after a dramatic decline in their population, which happened between 1992 and 2000.

Even though their numbers stabilized once the initial plan to protect them came into place, they still remain on the endangered list.

Because of that, the Alberta government announced on February 21st that they will be updating their plan to help increase their numbers enough, so they are no longer endangered.

Under this new plan, the Alberta government will work alongside its partners across the province to help further protect the hawk and support its habitat, nests, and prey.

Their partners include Indigenous communities, industry, conservation groups, landowners and other stakeholders.

In this new plan, they identified seven recovery strategies to help increase the population of Ferruginous hawks.

Those recovery strategies are reducing human disturbances at the hawk's nesting sites, ensuring there are an adequate number of nest structures available in the proper habitat, maintaining existing native grasslands and pasture lands on private and public land, maintaining and enhancing their prey population, limit the impacts of predators and competing birds, reducing human-caused mortality of the hawks, and the conservation of ferruginous hawks during their migration and on their wintering grounds.

These recovery actions will be implemented in areas with the highest suitability or have potential to support the highest densities of these hawks.

They require an open habitat, including grassland, shrub-steppe or desert, and typically nest in trees or elevated nesting platforms.

"This plan represents a collaborative, multi-year conservation effort between Environment and Protected Areas and multiple partners. While still not where they need to be, numbers of Ferruginous hawks appear to be moving in the right direction, thanks to these efforts," said the Minister of Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz in the media release. "These large, conspicuous hawks are an iconic species in our grasslands and play an important role in our province’s ecosystem."

For more information on how to keep these hawks safe, check out the Alberta Ferruginous Hawk Recovery Plan.