Sea Eagles

Last year there was a news report that sheep farmers were calling for a halt to the reintroduction of White Tailed Sea Eagles as they were supposedly acting as a predator on the Lambs of these farmers. The numbers of the alleged losses were however not credible. As simply the Eagles would have been feeding solely on the lambs, and even then the number of birds appeared to exceed the population of these Eagles in the area to be responsible for all these loses.

While as I reported at the time, I was and remain sceptical, the conservators and managers of the program are taking a responsible approach. Therefore, they are carrying out detailed research to discover if the Eagles are causing a problem and what adjustments can be done to prevent lamb losses by the farmers.

It has to be acknowledged that Sea Eagles can and will take Lambs, the Sea Eagle is larger than a Golden Eagle, so is capable of taking a new born lamb, but while they can take a newborn previous research and observation showed that the Eagles if they were eating Lambs were taking fallen stock. That is stock, lambs that had died anyway.

Therefore to ensure that the true facts are established, lambs will be fitted with tracking devices. These are movement detectors and if the lamb dies naturally and is then taken by the Eagles the data will show this. Equally, if the Eagles are taking live lambs the data will discover this too.

I genuinely do understand the concerns of the farmers and if the Eagles are taking Lambs that will impact hard pressed farmers. Keeping sheep is one of the most marginal forms of agriculture and while a single lamb is only worth twenty to seventy pounds (depending upon the market price), any significant losses can make the difference between the farm being viable or not.

However, I strongly suspect that many of these Lambs that the farmers are claiming were killed by the Sea Eagles were dead already. It may even be that some farmers are seeing the reintroduction of the birds as a way of claiming compensation, in much the same way that people try and up an insurance claim. While I will wait to see the data, at the moment it really does look as though the way for the farmers to minimise losses may be to change farming practices.

As the majority of farmers now bring their sheep in for lambing, by ensuring they are “served” at the same time, ensures that the lambs are all born at about the same time, the farmer has fewer losses. However, many of these small croft style farmers allow their lambs to be born on the hillside. Even without the Eagles in the area this method of farming always suffered greater mortality. Therefore I suspect the lamb mortality has more to do with farming practice than the reintroduction of Sea Eagles.

Its Ironic but just as the farmers are “Complaining” about the Eagles being a pest, equally they are complaining of an increase in the rabbit population. It does not take a great leap of imagination to see that the Sea Eagles could be part of the answer to the rabbit population. Farmers have to learn to adapt and accommodate the natural world. For far to long agriculture and farmers have had a genocidal attitude towards any wildlife that they dislike. The Sea Eagles are not just an important link in the ecological chain, but bring in important tourist income to the communities where they are establishing themselves, therefore communities need to find ways of accommodating these endangered birds.