The Golden Eagle Reintroduction Project is managed by the Golden Eagle Trust in partnership with, and with funding from, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which, as the Deputy will be aware, is a section within my Department. The purpose of the reintroduction project was to bring back eagles to Ireland, restoring a species that had been persecuted in the late 19th Century. The golden eagle was present in Glenveagh until 1910.
Experts on eagles in Scotland visited Glenveagh, by then a National Park, in the 1990s, and considered that the habitats in north Donegal were suitable for a reintroduction programme. 61 birds, sourced as chicks in Scotland, were released in Glenveagh between 2001 and 2012. The original plan was to release 75 birds over five years but it became increasingly difficult to find suitable donor stock in Scotland, resulting in fewer releases over a longer time span than originally planned.
Using data from radio and satellite tags and wing tags fitted to the released birds, it was established that some birds moved around Ireland and some even returned to Scotland. Some birds are known to have died of natural causes but 3 of the 10 satellite-tagged birds were poisoned, two in Donegal and one in Northern Ireland. My Department produces annual reports on all known cases of mortality and persecution of birds of prey.
The re-introduced eagles have nested over a number of years, and in 2014 and 2015 there were 3 known nests. However, breeding success has not been as good as anticipated. Sometimes, as is the case in 2015, this may be due to adverse weather at critical stages during nesting. However, as has been pointed out by the Golden Eagle Trust in recent weeks, there may also be issues to do with habitat quality and the amount of food prey available in the landscape.
There are many factors at play in matters concerning the ecology and behaviour of the golden eagle. Certainly, large-scale burning, as has occurred in recent years, is a factor in reducing habitat quality. Such burning poses a threat to property and forestry as well as to wildlife, and my Department is working with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to try to reduce this problem.
My Department and the Golden Eagle Trust will meet in the coming weeks to review the performance of the project to date and will examine what genuinely effective options are available in the short and medium term. My Department will then be in a position to decide if further discussions with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in regard to agri-environment measures would be useful.
