National Wildlife Crime Unit<\/a>, the disappearance of the eagle, which fledged in 2025 and has roamed widely across England this spring, is being treated as suspicious and an investigation is under way, police said.<\/p>\nThe bird arrived in the western side of the North York Moors on April 30, and its tag did not communicate overnight into May 1, with no further transmissions since.<\/p>\n
The white-tailed eagle, known as G834, was the first to be born in the wild in Dorset in 240 years, as part of a project to bring the birds of prey back to England.<\/p>\n
The eagles, nicknamed flying barn doors because of their wingspan of up to 8ft (2.4m), were once widespread in southern England until the 18th century when persecution led to them being wiped out in the region.<\/p>\n
The project by Forestry England and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation began reintroducing white-tailed eagles on the Isle of Wight in 2019, and has released 45 eagles since then.<\/p>\n
The birds have previously been reintroduced in Scotland.<\/p>\n
The first pair of Isle of Wight eagles bred successfully in 2023, fledging the first chick to have been born in the wild in England for more than 240 years.<\/p>\n
A further five chicks have been born in the wild since, and last month the Government announced the scheme would receive a boost with up to 20 young white-tailed eagles being released over three years in Exmoor National Park.<\/p>\n
A statement on behalf of the Forestry England and Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation reintroduction project said: \u201cWe are deeply shocked and saddened by the suspicious disappearance of this young white-tailed eagle.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the first to be bred in the wild in Dorset for 240 years and was beginning to really settle into the landscape.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe return of this lost species to England has so much support from the public and we know that many people will be devastated to hear this news.\u201d<\/p>\n
The conservationists said satellite data showing the birds\u2019 minute-by-minute movements was monitored every day and any suspicious or unusual data was always investigated.<\/p>\n
The statement said: \u201cThese special birds are helping people connect with the natural world and showing how with a little bit of help nature can thrive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you to everyone for their continued support and we encourage anyone who has information that may help the police investigation to come forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite concerns in some quarters that the birds could prey on livestock such as lambs, a study into the food the Isle of Wight birds are eating reported in 2024 that they were targeting prey such as cuttlefish, rabbits, fish and other birds, and there were \u201cno conflicts\u201d with farming.<\/p>\n
But the birds \u2013 whose return has faced opposition from some in the gamebird shooting community \u2013 have suffered persecution, with police investigating the disappearance of three birds last year in Sussex and Wales in suspicious circumstances.<\/p>\n
And in 2022, two released white-tailed eagles from the reintroduction scheme were found dead, prompting police investigations in Dorset and the Isle of Wight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":["post-712238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}