2025 Award and Grant Winners

The Raptor Research Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025 Awards and Grants. These awards recognize outstanding contributions to raptor research, conservation, and education around the world. Congratulations to all of this year’s recipients!

African Raptor Leadership Grants

• John Kasaya – Conservation ecology of raptors in and around Cross River National Park, Nigeria: Understanding ecological trends and engaging local knowledge for sustainable protection
• Maryam Chaker – The Endangered Egyptian Vulture in Morocco: Filling the Gaps about Distribution, Threats and Ecology

Caregiver Travel Awards

• David Ricardo Rodríguez-Villamil
• Beth Mendelsohn
• Bryce Robinson
• Irene Bueno
• Josue Arteaga-Torres
• María Eugenia Cabrera García

Dean Amadon Research Grant: Kate McGinn – The Distribution of Forest Owls Across the Sierra Nevada Following Natural and Anthropogenic Disturbance

Early-career Raptor Researcher Travel Award

• Radhika Jha – Climate Change and Habitat Dynamics: Implications for Resident Vultures
• Alejandra Morena Rojas – Diet analysis of three Strigiformes species based on pellet dissection
• Plakizia Msalilwa – Tracking Change: A Decade of Shifting African White-backed Vulture Habitat Use in the Serengeti–Mara Ecosystem
• Johannes Ploderer – Personality in Owls
• Natividad Aguilera Alcalá – Swainson's hawk (Buteo swainsoni) habitat selection in their wintering areas in central Argentina: trends associated to agricultural changes over the last two decades
• Gabriela Carlos Mendes – Is abundance alone a sign of success? The challenges in conserving an owl species considered successful in Brazil
• Ana Carolina Neiva de Oliveira – Beyond the bibliography: what citizen science has to say about Buff-fronted owl

Fran & Frederick Hamerstrom Achievement Award

• Lloyd Kiff
• Todd Katzner

Koplin Travel Awards

• Daniel Gambra – Flexible activity patterns in wide-ranging Golden Eagles across a vast latitudinal gradient
• Kevin Tkach – Influence of commercial afforestation on the taxonomic and functional diversity of raptors in a high-threaded grassland of South America
• Esther Viviana Vallejo – Monitoring raptor migration in central Colombia: key findings from Tolima Raptor Count and conservation implications
• Brayan Adres Gamboa Suarez – Coexisting with the Rufous-tailed Hawk in Los Ríos, Chile: breeding habitat and nest diet of a threatened forest raptor
• Jadzia Rodriguez – American Barn Owls may use social information cues to select nest boxes
• Antonella Mascaro – Trends in hatching failure over time in American Kestrels at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, Pennsylvania, USA: a 34-year study
• Maria Eugenia Cabrera Garcia – The significant role of carcass unpredictability in shaping vertebrate scavenger assemblages, as shown by beta-diversity
• Malyasri Bhattacharya – Seasonal movement and nest site fidelity of White-rumped Vultures in the Indian Himalayas

Kevin Kritz Award: Manual Grande – Diet and space use—disentangling potential conflicts of Black-and-chestnut Eagles with local settlers in Argentina

Michele Panuccio Research Award: Sara Morollon – Correlation of biochemical markers with the migratory timing of Black Kites from Western Palearctic.

Oscar Beingolea Research Grant: Laura Casalins – Anticoagulant Rodenticides in Patagonia: A Growing Threat to Wildlife

Partners for Raptors Lifetime Achievement Award: Andrew Dixon

RRF Exceptional Service Award: Rob Bierregaard

RRF President’s Award: Sandy Boyce

Stephen Tully Research Grant: Archileus Tardzenyuy – Human-raptor conflicts in rural communities: A case study of poultry farmers in the Matoh area

Tom Cade Achievement Award

• Russell Thorstrom
• Carl G. Jones

William Andersen Student Presentation Awards

• Paper/PhD level: Carolina Granthon – Factors affecting hatchability in a captive population of California Condors
• Poster/PhD level: Brooke Poplin – Fragmentation and developed land influence Harris’s Hawk home range size and selection
• Paper/MSc–Undergraduate: Tom Hudson – Efficacy of voluntary use of lead-free ammunition to reduce lead exposure to Golden Eagles on White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, USA
• Poster/MSc–Undergraduate: Aletta Bergman – Fire and fuels treatment effects on a diverse forest owl assemblage

Wings-to-Fly Travel Awards

• Mahmood Kolnegari – Sensitivity mapping of raptors-powerline conflict in Iran
• Nick Carter – Preparing to leave home: the pre-dispersal movements of an Australian threatened apex predator
• Paula Orozco Valor – Earlier reproduction with increasing temperature in the American kestrel: A response to climate change?
• Sonja Krüger – Bearded Vulture Recovery programme: Using a Population Viability Analysis to inform conservation action for the Bearded Vulture in Southern Africa
• Fernando Lopez – Lessons learned from the ecology and management of Merlins: implications for conservation of the endangered Great Lakes Piping Plover
• Asaf Mayrose – Natal site origin within a steep aridity gradient determines eagle dispersal movement, habitat selection and survival
• Borje Moen – Fitness of an apex predator: Reproduction and survival of Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) in northern Norway
• Alazar Ruffo - The Study of Vulture Populations, Distribution, Diversity and the Threats they are Facing in Ethiopia 

Congratulations to all the 2025 awardees for their outstanding research, conservation efforts, and dedication to raptors worldwide!