The Durban Crowned Eagle Research Project

With talons longer than a lion’s teeth and a six-foot wingspan, the African crowned eagle is Africa’s most formidable flying forest predator. Despite their powerful frame, their compact build gives them the agility to manoeuvre through dense tropical forest, where they ambush prey four times their size and weighing up to 70 lbs. These specialised hunters target reclusive antelope and arboreal monkeys that other predators cannot reach, reducing the pressure those animals place on young forest vegetation and aiding the maintenance and regeneration of tropical forest.

A mega-predator that learned to live in the city

Thanks to an abundance of urban prey, these jaw-dropping birds have remarkably adapted to urban life in Durban. With over 90 monitored nests, some in plain view from local backyards, Dr. Shane McPherson leads the Durban African Crowned Eagle Research Project, using cutting-edge GPS tracking and nest cameras to study breeding success, movement, and interaction within urban environments. The work asks a single question: how are these giant birds coexisting with people in South Africa’s third-largest city?

Shane is the world’s leading expert on the species. His research has featured across nature documentaries and films for the BBC and National Geographic, and most recently in the award-winning PBS series Raptors: A Fistful of Daggers.

Why it matters

Despite their ecological importance, crowned eagles are classified as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List. Raptors in general are often overlooked in conservation, which makes research consistently difficult to fund. When you walk Tanglewood with Camille, your presence contributes directly to this living dataset.

Every Legacy Conservation Safari helps finance Dr. McPherson’s crowned eagle programme, and we are proud to completely finance this research for the year, every year. Through this partnership, we work to secure the future of African crowned eagles in both urban and natural landscapes.