{"id":581226,"date":"2026-05-13T06:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T06:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/581226\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T06:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T06:38:09","slug":"white-tailed-eagles-to-be-reintroduced-in-exmoor-despite-farmer-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/581226\/","title":{"rendered":"White-tailed eagles to be reintroduced in Exmoor despite farmer concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Connon, president of the National Farmers’ Union Scotland, said: “Any Exmoor release must learn from Scottish experience and ensure that farmers are supported within their existing farm systems to embed strong safeguards for livestock from the outset.”<\/p>\n

Lamb predation is being closely monitored in Scotland, external<\/a> and farmers are being given some financial help in managing and mitigating the risks to their flocks.<\/p>\n

The extent to which white-tailed eagles are killing lambs, or whether they are mostly taking carcasses of already dead animals, remains a source of disagreement between many farmers and conservationists.<\/p>\n

A survey of farmers and land managers in Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Durham published this month by the NFU found 85% of respondents were against a proposed reintroduction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for the National Sheep Association (NSA) said the organisation had “concerns when new white-tailed sea eagle releases are discussed”. <\/p>\n

It has called for a full impact assessment of white-tailed eagle reintroductions “taking into account farm viability and mental health” before more releases take place.<\/p>\n

NSA chairman Peter Delbridge, a sixth-generation farmer on Exmoor, told the BBC: “We don’t want to reach the situation where the genie is out of the bottle and we’re experiencing losses but because they are a protected bird we won’t be able to deal with it ourselves.”<\/p>\n

Natural England, the government’s wildlife licensing authority, said it would “closely monitor” how the reintroduction on Exmoor is implemented.<\/p>\n

Matthew Heard, Natural England’s national delivery director, said the licence it has approved “supports a carefully planned reintroduction, grounded in strong evidence and built on collaboration with local communities and land managers”.<\/p>\n

He added: “This moment has been a long time in the planning and shows what can be achieved when ambitious partnerships, good science and positive engagement come together.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrew Connon, president of the National Farmers’ Union Scotland, said: “Any Exmoor release must learn from Scottish experience…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-581226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}