For the first time in over 150 years, a white-tailed eagle has been born in Waterford.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The eagle was believed to have been last seen in the D\u00e9ise around 1870.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The apex predator species nearly went into extinction a century ago due to human activity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The chick was born thanks to the conservation work of the National Parks & Wildlife Service (NPWS) who began their White-Tailed Eagle Reintroduction Programme in 2007.<\/p>\n
After 18 years, the project has ended with the successful release of four white-tailed eagle chicks back into the wild at Killarney National Park.<\/p>\n
In September, Project Manager Eamon Meskell told RT\u00c9 that a white-tailed eagle was possible last seen in Waterford in 1870.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said: “Generally, the eagles’ migration has been north and west. So to see a pair migrate to Waterford proves that the project is working.”<\/p>\n
Mr Meskell noted that the chick is the first of the project born east of the River Shannon. The parents of the chick, K and L, are raising their young on the River Blackwater near Youghal, Co Cork, close to the Waterford border.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to Mr Meskell: “They fly around the country. I suppose they’re putting an aerial map into their brain to see what the country is like, where the territorial areas suitable to them would be. I suppose this pair, specifically, would have come from a release cage in the southeast of the country.<\/p>\n
“So they wouldn’t have drifted east from the cages that we had already, but they’d have come from a cage that was on the Blackwater river.”<\/p>\n
There are approximately 75 white-tailed eagles now living in the wild.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Meskill said the Waterford birth “gives confidence that the whole project is sustainable and working”.<\/p>\n
“It is so satisfying to see.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time in over 150 years, a white-tailed eagle has been born in Waterford.\u00a0 The eagle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-2169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}