The majesty of the Golden Eagle elevated this species to an important position for many Native American, First Nations, and some Meso-American cultures.  Golden Eagles are sacred and therefore their feathers are central to many religious and spiritual ceremonies and to honor noteworthy achievements and qualities.  Despite their cultural importance, Golden Eagles face a combination of direct persecution (shooting), indirect persecution (habitat loss and alteration as well as deaths due to electrocutions, wind farms, and collisions with automobiles) and environmental pollutants (lead poisoning) that led to population declines in the continental U.S. Similar to Bald Eagles Golden Eagles are legally protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and this protection, coupled with other conservation measures have thus far allowed the Golden Eagle species  not to be listed as endangered.

Our understanding of many aspects of Golden Eagle biology is so poor that it is difficult to develop scientifically based management plans for this ecologically and culturally important species.  Understanding the partitioning of genetic variation within and among populations of Golden Eagles is critical for their proper management as it allows for the delineation of conservation/management units necessary to minimize the loss of genetic diversity, preserve the existing genetic structure of the species, and determine natal origins of individuals.  Identification of conservation/management units is the first step is any conservation/management plan so that managers and policy makers understand the boundaries of the population units they are attempting to conserve.  Unfortunately, for Golden Eagles the existence of conservation/management unit boundaries are unknown, and in fact, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is determining whether it is best to manage Golden Eagles via Flyways or via Eagle Management Units, which roughly correspond to Bird Conservation Regions.  However, these decisions are currently being made in the absence of any genetic data. By determining the current levels of genetic variation as well as how this genetic variation is structured across the species range, wildlife managers can work to preserve the genetic variation thereby allowing the species the ability to adapt to future diseases and climate change.

The overarching objective of our study on Golden Eagles is to develop “DNA Zipcodes” so that we can determine biologically and genetically relevant units for the management of Golden Eagles.  Moreover, once these genetically defined units are determined, these DNA Zipcodes will allow us to genetically assign individuals to their natal origin.  To identify the DNA Zipcodes, we are utilizing Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs).  To date, we sequenced the entire genome of a male Golden Eagle at an 88X statistical coverage and also sequenced the transcriptomes of three tissues.  Moreover, we performed low coverage genomic sequencing of 41 Golden Eagles from across the North America and identified approximately 1.5 million SNPs.  After aligning these data to the Golden Eagle genome we sequenced, we identified SNPs that were in noncoding intergenic regions, those in coding regions, as well as those upstream or downstream of coding regions.  Finally, we reduced this approximately 1.5 million SNPs to about 50,000 SNPs with about half in intergenic regions and the other half either in ecologically relevant genes or upstream or downstream of these genes.  These ~50,000 SNPs are being placed on an array (SNP Chip) so that all future birds can be genotyped for the same loci.