John Power of Waterford For Nature confirmed to WLRFM that the county now has a successful breeding pair of White Tailed Eagles – the first since the 1800s.<\/p>\n
The pair – known as K and L – were introduced to the southeast a number of years ago and have now successfully raised a chick.<\/p>\n
“This is the first White Tailed Eagle breeding success in Waterford in upwards of 200 years,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We are absolutely thrilled.”<\/p>\n
Ireland is a natural habitat for eagles given the plentiful food sources on both land and sea.<\/p>\n
However, the great raptors were driven to extinction by a variety of factors.<\/p>\n
These ranged from hunting, egg stealing, deliberate nest destruction and loss of breeding habitats.<\/p>\n
Eagles went extinct in Ireland in the 19th Century.<\/p>\n
However, the raptors remained plentiful in northern parts of Europe, especially Scandinavia.<\/p>\n
Since 2007, Ireland has been reintroducing eagles with the backing of Norwegian wildlife services who have supplied young birds to support the programme.<\/p>\n
Over the past 18 years, a total of 245 young eagles have been reintroduced to Ireland.<\/p>\n
The National Park and Wildlife Service (NPWS) coordinates the reintroduction programme and have been delighted to see eagles establish breeding territories in Cork, Clare, Tipperary, Galway and Waterford.<\/p>\n
Waterford’s breeding pair were introduced in the Blackwater estuary in 2001.<\/p>\n
Their hunting territory extends to the Knockmealdown mountains.<\/p>\n
Celebrations erupted when photographs were taken of the adult birds with a smaller bird which had dark tail feathers.<\/p>\n
These are a giveaway of a fledgling bird – with the adults teaching the youngsters how to spot prey and hunt.<\/p>\n
The eyrie of the eagles is a closely guarded secret to protect the birds.<\/p>\n
Further, people have been asked not to disturb the birds.<\/p>\n
Setbacks<\/p>\n
White Tailed Eagles have gradually re-established themselves across Ireland despite multiple setbacks.<\/p>\n
Their prime breeding grounds across the Atlantic coast were badly hit by unseasonal early storms in 2020\/21.<\/p>\n
A number of nests were destroyed by violent storms in April – a time when chicks are at their most vulnerable.<\/p>\n
It was the first time that Kerry did not have a successful breeding pair.<\/p>\n
Kerry is the mainstay of the population though birds are also doing well in other coastal counties.<\/p>\n
While the eagle was reintroduced to Ireland 18 years ago, the population has been boosted by the repeated introduction of birds collected under license in Norway.<\/p>\n
White-tailed Eagle chicks were collected by the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) and transported to Ireland for release in June 2020 and June 2021.<\/p>\n
Phase II releases began in 2020 with the collection of an additional 10 birds from nests in Norway and their release some 6-8 weeks later at Lough Derg in Tipperary and in the Shannon Estuary.<\/p>\n
White Tailed Eagles feed primarily on fish, waterbirds and carrion or animal carcasses.<\/p>\n
Most pairs settle on territories around the coast and large freshwater lakes to breed.<\/p>\n
However, the bird is incredibly vulnerable to human activity.<\/p>\n
A scientific review of the reintroduction project indicated the small population was still vulnerable to mortality factors such as illegal poisoning while the breeding population was negatively impacted by Avian Influenza in 2018 and Storm Hannah in 2019.<\/p>\n
One of the birds released on Lough Derg became very sick from lead poisoning and was only saved through human intervention and months of subsequent care.<\/p>\n
The incident was likely as a result of the bird eating foxes which had been killed with lead shot and then left out in the open.<\/p>\n
Between 2007 and 2020, a total of 14 eagles have been killed across Ireland by humans through poisoning, being shot or being struck by vehicles.<\/p>\n
That prompted the decision to reintroduce further breeding pairs from Norway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Power of Waterford For Nature confirmed to WLRFM that the county now has a successful breeding pair…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,898,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-3026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-latest-news-ticker","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3026","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=3026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}