Red Kites – A Return to Sender – Translocation, UK to Spain!
In 2022 a number of young Red Kites were taken from the nest in UK, and sent to Spain to help rebuild the population of these beautiful birds. In 1989 the UK benfited from a similar programme from Spain to re-establish the population here.
The Demise of the Red Kite in the UK.
The Red Kite is a stunning bird with long wings, supreme agility, and beautiful markings. It was once a common bird in Britain, but during the late 19th century and much of the 20th it was persecuted to near extinction.
The Populations Remained Strong in Southern Europe
Watching them and their close relative, the Black Kite, over the years in Portugal and Spain has given us a lot of pleasure.
They are easy to spot, and we often see them circling busy roads looking for road kill. They readily scavenge in built up areas and can gather in large numbers at roosts and good feeding sites. See: https://woodcockwood.com/red-kites-and-black-kites/
All this suggests they are a common raptor, and so it came as a surprise to read that the UK are sending a number of young Red Kites to Extremadura and Andalusia as part of a translocation programme to rebuild the numbers in these regions.
Relocation of Red Kites to England and Scotland
Rewind thirty plus years to 1989, and Britain’s population of Red Kites had been decimated by persecution from gamekeepers and landowners, and was confined to a small part of Wales.
With considerable preliminary work, the RSPB and The Nature Conservancy Council (now Natural England) working with a number of other organisations, collaborated in an attempt to bring these birds back from the brink of extinction in the UK.
During the first phase of the programme young birds were brought from Spain to the Chilterns. This population quickly established and grew, and then became the source of young birds to be reintroduced to other parts of England.
A parallel programme in Scotland used birds from Sweden and Germany.
The Most Successful Relocation Programme on Record
The success of the English programme was due to a number of factors, in particular, close work with local landowners to ensure a sessation of illegal shooting and poisoning in the area, and a major school and public education programme.
The other important factor was the introduction of feeding locations for the birds. Over time, of course, this has its downside, but initially it helped the growing population of Red Kites to thrive.
The English and Welsh population of Red Kites continues to increase. In Scotland however, where illegal shooting and trapping continues, no such growth is evident, a clear indication of the significant impact of this factor.
Why the Spanish Population Crash?
In much of Spain, the environment is perfect for raptors. Also there is food aplenty. There are many vulture feeding stations, muladares, controlled locations for providing condemmed meat, primarily for the vulture population. Muladares also benefit other scavenging birds including kites.
As in Scoltand, the key problem for the kite population has been the illegal killing of kites, mainly through the use of poison bait. But in recent years provincial authorites in Andalusia and Extremadura have stepped up their capacity to quell such practices using sniffer dog teams to find poisoned bait, and a system of heavy fines and imprisonment for perpetrators.
It was with this assurance that the main cause of the population crash was being dealt with, that the translocation programme is being implemented.
Point of Interest:
I first saw mention of this project in the News and Comment section of the journal British Birds, where they report that after Germany, Britain has the second highest national population of Red Kites at around 6,000 breeding pairs. It goes on to say that a total of 15 chicks from Northamptonshire were transported to southern Spain in June, as part of a programme that will see 30 young kites relocated each summer for the next three years (British Birds, Sept 2022, Vol 115 pp 482).
John Holmes, Operations Director, Natural England, describes the complexity of the current project which is part of a European-wide raptor conservation programme involving many organisations. He also mentions his own role in the original project that brought birds from Spain to UK …
“My essential skills for this trip to Spain though were driving and carrying stuff …” for him the programme does go full circle.
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