Sightings of a young harpy eagle in southern Mexico’s Lacandon Jungle in 2023 have now been verified, marking the first time in more than a decade that South America’s largest bird of prey has been spotted in the country, contributor Astrid Arellano reported for Mongabay Latam.

Photos and video of the bird were taken by a farmer in the state of Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border, challenging the assumption that the species had gone extinct from Mexico. The images were later verified and the discovery publicly announced at the Chiapas Bird Festival in April 2025.

“What’s interesting about this sighting is that we’re not just talking about one eagle, but three: that young eagle and its parents, which indicates the presence of a breeding territory in the country,” Alan Monroy-Ojeda, a tropical ecologist who coordinated the verification of the images with the Mexican conservation organization Dimensión Natural, told Arellano.

Harpy eagles (Harpia harpyja) can grow to 1 meter tall (3.3 feet), with a wingspan of 2 m (6.5 ft). They have huge talons and are powerful enough capture prey that weigh as much as them. They raise just one chick at a time until their offspring is fully independent, which can take up to two and a half years.

The presence of the juvenile bird, estimated to be between 28 and 38 months old, suggests it had recently left its nest and was still within close range of its birthplace.

“At that age, they usually don’t move more than 10 kilometers [6 miles] from the nest,” Monroy-Ojeda told Mongabay. “Eagles are very faithful to their nesting sites and can use the same nest for many years.”

The Lacandon Jungle where the harpy eagle was spotted has lost more than two-thirds of its native tree cover to agriculture, cattle ranching and other human activities. “For the last 20 years, the Lacandon Jungle has been suffering severely,” Silvano López Gómez, a member of the local community monitoring group Siyaj Chan, told Mongabay. López photographed a harpy eagle in the region in 2011, the last time the species was definitively spotted in Mexico before this latest discovery.

The IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, lists the harpy eagle as vulnerable to extinction. In many parts of its historical range, particularly in Central and North America, the eagle survives in fragmented islands of habitat. Its remaining stronghold is largely confined to the Amazon Rainforest.

Local conservationists say they’re hopeful the resurgence of the harpy eagle in Chiapas will help fuel local conservation efforts. “It helps us regain our motivation,” said Francisco Centeno, another member of Siyaj Chan.

This is a summary of “Águila harpía: reaparece la majestuosa ave rapaz que se creía extinta en México” by Astrid Arellano for Mongabay, originally published in Spanish on May 17, 2025. 

Banner image: A harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja). Image by Brian Gratwicke via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).