Projects to bring back golden and white-tailed eagles face challenges, but optimism remains.
A golden eagle nest in the mountains of Donegal
"In fact, I know several farmers who say they actually like to see the golden eagles, because they keep the grey crow numbers down and grey crows can be problematic at lambing time."Mr O'Toole says the project changed people's mindset about birds of prey and helped create a better understanding of the food chain."The golden eagle population is still kind of confined to Donegal and it should really have spread by now into Mayo or Galway. I think that will still happen.
"We've now got 34 wild-born chicks added to the population of those brought to Ireland," the original project manager Dr Allan Mee, who is still an advisor, says.Dr Mee says one of the first breeding pairs nested on an island in Lough Derg, just in front of the town of Mountshannon in County Clare. "We had a bird that spent the whole summer in 2019 in the north of England and visited the Isle of Man on the way back to Ireland, the first white-tailed eagle seen there since 1930, that was an Irish wild-bred chick from Connemara."
Three birds have been lost in collisions with wind turbines, and in 2018 a further three were lost to bird flu, adds Dr Mee. "And then we were looking at how many have survived and we went back and did this modelling again and the answer was the project was working, but if you want to guarantee its success you should think about a second reintroduction.""If a tag shows the bird hasn't moved for a day or two, we might send out one of the rangers to have a look and see if it's got a problem," he says.
"One of the farmers can remember his grandfather talking about the last eagles or hearing stories of them.Image source,Dr Allan Mee says the goal is to get to the point where no more new birds have to be brought in"We're near that point, so that's why we decided to bring some more birds in when we got the chance," he says.
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