Finland's white-tailed eagles have been growing about 9 percent a year

White-tailed eagles on Finland's Baltic coast and in Lapland have both been increasing at about 9 percent a year. Phys.org reported on November 10, 2026, on a study in the journal Oikos led by researchers at the University of Turku and the University of Helsinki, with the Swiss Ornithological Institute. The model draws on more than 50 years of breeding-pair counts and chick numbers from 2,468 nests in almost 1,000 territories, plus ringing, resightings, dead recoveries, and genetic identification of 7,179 birds.

Lead author Carina Nebel said the two populations are conservation successes that did not recover the same way. On the Baltic, younger birds survive well and then compete for breeding sites. In Lapland, adults do particularly well and survival of younger birds is lower. Toni Laaksonen said the long record came from volunteers of the White-tailed Eagle Working Group, first under WWF Finland and now under the Osprey Foundation. The species had become rare in Europe after persecution and pollution, and legal protection and cleaner environments sit behind the increase. The news is these two growth rates and the difference in which ages sustain them. It is not a claim that every European population has recovered the same way.