Reintroducing birds of prey cost €1.5m

Close to €1.5m has been spent reintroducing three species of birds of prey, one of which had been extinct here for more than 200 years.

Most of the money has been spent since 2007 and the figure does not take into account the input of National Parks and Wildlife Service personnel.

The Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, which took over responsibility for wildlife from the Department of the Environment in 2011, has defended the cost, saying Ireland had the lowest number of breeding bird of prey species of any member state in the EU.

It also said the “public interest” in the project has been very good and there has been “much support” for the reintroduction programmes which are operated by the department in partnership with registered charity the Golden Eagle Trust. The raptor reintroduction programme began in Donegal with the golden eagle but gathered momentum from 2007, when two further species, the white- tailed eagle and the red kite, were introduced in Kerry and Wicklow respectively.

Several kites have succumbed to poisonings, as they feed on rats, and a number of eagles have been shot or poisoned.

Of the €1,468,461, €500,000 went on funding the Golden Eagle Trust for the Killarney white-tailed eagle project. That figure does not include the cost incurred by wildlife personnel attached to department employees of Killarney National Park.

The golden eagle now has eight territories in Donegal; the white-tailed eagle has seven nesting pairs and chicks; the red kite has over two dozen breeding pairs.