The Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) is calling for an immediate halt to the removal of rare Scottish golden eagle chicks from their nests to a relocation project in the Republic of Ireland - where our iconic birds are being exposed to the legal laying of poisoned bait.
Just last month an SNH report stated that some parts of Scotland no longer have viable populations of golden eagles despite having the ideal habitat conditions for the species to thrive. The agency went on to blame the problem on persecution.
But SNH didn’t mention that 50 golden eagle chicks have been removed from Scottish eagle eyries since 2001 and another are 25 scheduled to go in a reintroduction programme to Ireland. Many of these eagles have been taken from the very areas in the east of Scotland where the birds are now most scarce, and at the last count only 26 out of 42 chicks could be accounted for.
SGA chairman, Alex Hogg said the SNH report reeked of double standards.
“Until Ireland can prove that they are looking after our eagles better than they are currently doing – when half are either dead or missing and they haven’t bothered to do post mortems on the birds to discover why they died – we should call an immediate halt to this extravagant experiment,” he said
“It is a sick irony that SNH is exporting precious birds to Ireland to have them exposed to legal poison at the same time as they are blaming persecution by gamekeepers as the reason why golden eagle numbers here are lower than they should be. Our research shows that chicks are being taken on a regular basis from seven eyries within what SNH knows to be the least populated area. And the chicks they are removing are fledged and viable birds.”
The Golden Eagle Project website confirms that the latest figures show only 26 of the 42 eagles sent in the period to 2006 could be confirmed alive. Autopsies were not done on the birds discovered dead, but the website states that “at least” two birds have been lost to persecution and several more could have been lost to similar causes.”
The website adds “Shooting and poisoning are the two key threats to the survival of Golden Eagles on this island. Recreational and unintentional disturbance by birdwatchers may also likely be a potential threat to the outcome of some breeding attempts in the future. The poisoning of Hooded Crows and Magpies with Alphachloralose is still legal in the Republic of Ireland, under strict conditions that have been largely ignored over recent years