The white-tailed 'eagle effect' on the Isle of Wight
10/25/19 • 20 min
This week's podcast hears from the Isle of Wight, ten weeks after the release of six white-tailed eagles in the last place they bred in England, 240 years ago. Two of the project's volunteer team - biologist Tracy Dove and ornithologist Jim Baldwin - and Forestry England's White-Tailed Eagle Project Officer, Steve Egerton-Read, talk about whether there has been an 'eagle effect' on the island since their release. Has widespread interest in the birds spread out to a broader interest in nature and the environment? Of course, with a project like this, aiming to introduce 60 young eagles to the island over five years, ups and downs are to be expected, and the three discuss how they have reacted to the highs - the presence of eagles once again on the island and the fact that most are thriving and learning to survive independently - as well as to the lows, including the death of one of the birds.
Producer: Moira Hickey
Contributors (in order of appearance): Steve Egerton-Read, Tracy Dove and Jim Baldwin
Music credit: Realness by Kai Engel, from the Free Music Archive
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This week's podcast hears from the Isle of Wight, ten weeks after the release of six white-tailed eagles in the last place they bred in England, 240 years ago. Two of the project's volunteer team - biologist Tracy Dove and ornithologist Jim Baldwin - and Forestry England's White-Tailed Eagle Project Officer, Steve Egerton-Read, talk about whether there has been an 'eagle effect' on the island since their release. Has widespread interest in the birds spread out to a broader interest in nature and the environment? Of course, with a project like this, aiming to introduce 60 young eagles to the island over five years, ups and downs are to be expected, and the three discuss how they have reacted to the highs - the presence of eagles once again on the island and the fact that most are thriving and learning to survive independently - as well as to the lows, including the death of one of the birds.
Producer: Moira Hickey
Contributors (in order of appearance): Steve Egerton-Read, Tracy Dove and Jim Baldwin
Music credit: Realness by Kai Engel, from the Free Music Archive
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Previous Episode
White-tailed eagles: their reintroduction to Scotland
The white-tailed eagle had been absent from Scotland for forty years when the very first attempt at reintroduction took place in 1958. A later project, led in 1968 by Roy Dennis and George Waterston on Fair Isle, between Orkney and Shetland, was groundbreaking but also unsuccessful, due largely to the very small number of birds involved. This podcast, though, hears from John Love, in conversation with Roy, as he talks about his ten years on the Hebridean island of Rum, site of the first successful reintroduction of sea eagles to Scotland, led by John in partnership with Roy and others. Eleven consecutive years and a total of 83 eagles brought in from Norway (with invaluable support from the RAF) led to success for this precursor to similar reintroduction projects, such as the current one on the Isle of Wight.
Producer: Moira Hickey
Contributors (in order of appearance): John Love, Roy Dennis
Music credit: Realness by Kai Engel, downloadable from the Free Music Archive
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Next Episode
The new season starts: rebuilding an osprey nest
8th April 1960 was the day when Roy Dennis saw his first ever osprey, while working at the famous Loch Garten site in the Highlands of Scotland. Sixty years on, he's still working with the birds, and this podcast was recorded in early March as (with colleagues Fraser Cormack and Ian Perks) he sets out to rebuild a local osprey nest which is in danger of collapse. It was built back in 1967 by only the second osprey pair in Scotland and rebuilt by Roy seven years later, after it crashed to the ground, taking with it the chick inside it. Once the new nest was in place, Roy placed the chick in its new home, where the adult birds continued to feed it, and it survived. Since then, the nest has remained a successful breeding site, but the tree on which it sits has now started to lean and looks in serious danger of collapse, so it's time to intervene once more.
Using techniques borrowed from the birds themselves, Roy, Ian and Fraser use material from the old nest to make a new one, building a framework of dead sticks lined with moss on a platform hoisted into the tree as a base. It's a tried and tested technique, and the provision of such nests enables ospreys to establish successful breeding partnerships and, it's hoped, boost overall numbers. While the Scottish population has grown to more than 300 pairs since that first pair sixty years ago, it is still far smaller than it could (or should) be, and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation engages in direct, hands-on conservation as a means to enable it to grow further.
This podcast was recorded before the introduction of restrictions on movement due to coronavirus.
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