Four white-tailed eagles have been released at a site on the Shannon Estuary in the north Kerry / west Limerick area. A further two white-tailed eagles have also been released at Lough Derg in Co. Tipperary.
The latest move by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht means that all ten eagles brought into Ireland in June from Norway have now been released into the wild.
Earlier this month, four eagles were released at Lough Derg as part of the Phase II project to bolster the small existing breeding population in Ireland.
‘The most impressive birds in the world’
The NPWS says: “An important aspect of any releases…is cooperation with the farming communities in the release areas and where birds settle to breed.”
Meanwhile, Minister of State with responsibility for heritage and electoral reform, Malcolm Noonan says: “While 2020 has been a difficult year for the human population, the year has seen some landmark developments for Ireland’s small population of the once extinct White-tailed Sea Eagle.
These are our largest birds of prey and one of the most impressive birds in the world.
It has been a milestone year this year with the first Irish bred white-tailed eagle fledging her own young. The two chicks hatched at a nest on Lough Derg, Co. Tipperary to a female who was herself reared at a nest also along Lough Derg near Mountshannon, Co. Clare in 2015.
The release project is managed by Eamonn Meskell of the NPWS with Dr. Allan Mee of the Golden Eagle Trust with the aim of restoring the iconic species, which has been absent for almost a century, to the Irish landscape.