Plans are afoot to plan for Golden Eagles to be reintroduced into England.
A few thoughts:
- This announcement didn’t announce much and should probably be seen as one of those from government which is designed to get some favourable media attention (in this case ahead of local elections in many parts of England in May). But having made this announcement government is now somewhat committed to following through (although events in the Straits of Hormuz might affect anything in our future).
- King of the skies? Half of them are females, and female Golden Eagles are bigger and somewhat bossier than male Golden Eagles but maybe Sky Queens doesn’t push the same buttons.
- I’d like to see Golden Eagles in England but it isn’t at the very top of my list of conservation wishes. If you offered me 20 pairs of Golden Eagles nesting in northern England next year then I’d love it, but everything suggests getting to that figure would be a very long slog – and perhaps best achieved by the UK (English, Defra) government lobbing some money to Scotland to bolster the South Scotland Golden Eagle reintroduction project.
- Upland northern England doesn’t look like a great place for Golden Eagles to me. There are very few deer and very few hares (of either species) and the number of sheep in the hills have been reduced over recent years and the amount of sheep carrion will have been reduced even more, I reckon. Let them eat Mountain Hares? What Mountain Hares? Let them eat Red Grouse? That’s a great idea!
- Golden Eagles will be in a very minor and best-ignored conflict with sheep farming. If we want eagles then they’ll certainly eat a few sickly lambs and any dead ones they can find and we ought to say that sheep farmers will have to put up with it. Golden Eagles are a natural hazard after all.
- The farming industry will have to find ways of making money out of surviving sheep and write off any dead ones (there won’t be many). But there will surely be opportunities to make money out of showing people Golden Eagles and holiday cottages with regular Golden eagles should command a premium.
- I note that there is a lot of emphasis on only releasing young eagles if there is ‘strong support from local communities’. I look forward to taxation, defence spending and NHS funding having the same apparent vetoes attached to them. Government’s job is to do good, across a range of issues for the public and should not be derailed by vested interests.
- And what about the grouse shooters? Will they immediately be won over by the sight of Sky Queens knocking off Red Grouse and scaring them silly as the shooting season approaches? Experience suggests that the intensive Red Grouse shooting industry will not react in a welcoming way to Golden Eagles. But they are on the way out anyway with greater scrutiny of their behaviour, concern about flood risk and greenhouse gas emissions caused by heather burning and a generally greater understanding that grouse shooting is not a harmless sport for toffs but is an ecological disaster for many upland areas. Maybe we should just wait for more and more grouse moors to wither away and then let the Sky Queens have their reign?
I’ve been trying to think up a system of carrots and sticks which would persuade more landowners not to kill eagles and actively to attract them. Most of the ones I have considered are a bit off the wall. Any ideas?
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