Bonelli’s eagle,
Hieraaetus fasciatus
, has recently suffered a severe population decline
and is currently endangered. Spain supports about 70% of the European population.
We used stepwise logistic regression on a set of environmental, spatial and human
variables to model Bonelli’s eagle distribution in the 5167 UTM 10
×
10 km quadrats
of peninsular Spain. We obtained a model based on 16 variables, which allowed us to
identify favourable and unfavourable areas for this species in Spain, as well as intermediate
favourability areas. We assessed the stepwise progression of the model by
comparing the model’s predictions in each step with those of the final model, and
selected a parsimonious explanatory model based on three variables — slope, July
temperature and precipitation — comprising 76% of the predictive capacity of th
