ecttorepopulatesouthernEnglandwith
hugeeagles– Europe’slargest,witha
ngspanofupto2.4m.Alsoknownas
a eagles,theirnicknamewithbirdersis
yingbarndoors’.
Whenfirstproposed,theschemewas
reetedwithhowlsofoutrage.“Letting8ft
llerseaeagleslooseontheSouthCoast
ustbird-brained,”rantheheadlineto
inPage’sDailyMailprotest.Predictable,
haps,giventhata similarplanbyNatural
landandtheRSPBtobringbackwhite-
edeaglestoSuffolkhadbeendropped
010,ostensiblybecausefundingcuts
antthegovernmentbodycouldno
gerafforda costlypublicconsultation.In
ctice,fierceoppositionfromlocalturkey
pigfarmershadleftit deadinthewater.n themove
gainst the odds, this time a licence was
granted to release up to 60 eagles over five
years. In June 2019, the first six young
birds were taken from healthy Scottish
nests, driven overnight to the Isle of Wight,
settled in familiarisation pens with minimalA
nyone under 30 may find
it hard to believe that
red kites – reintroduced
to England during the
1990s and now so
common over Reading
and the M40 and M4
corridor that people barely give them
a second glance – were once about to
disappear from Britain. Could white-tailed
eagles, recently returned to the Isle of Wight
after a 240-year absence in England, soar to
equally spectacular heights by 2050?
“Why not?” says Tim Mackrill, a quietly
confident raptor specialist who works for
the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation. “These
birds belong here, cheek by jowl, right
among us.” Together with Forestry England,
the foundation is leading an ambitiousWHITE-TAILED EAGLES
Widespread across
Europe, white-tailed
eagles are slowly
being reintroduced
across the UK.