Golden eagles made their return to Ireland after 80 years yesterday as six young chicks were flown to Carrickfinn Airport in Co Donegal on a charter flight from Aberdeen.
Driven immediately to their new home in Glenveagh National Park, they were installed in custom-made cages.
For the next six weeks the chicks can look forward to a diet of one rabbit a day. The chicks, which are guests of the Irish Raptor Study Group, will be freed in August to roam the skies above Glenveagh or return to the cages for food as they wish.
One of the chicks was brought to meet waiting press photographers and cameramen, but the other five were kept safely away, as contact with humans can prevent them from settling in the wild.
Yesterday was the culmination of six years' work for the Irish Raptor Study Group and the project is being watched by conservationists around Europe. It is the first scientific attempt to reintroduce a vanished species to Ireland.
Project manager Mr Lorcan O'Toole said the chicks are now aged between five and eight weeks and weigh about three kilos. When fully grown, they will weigh up to five kilos and have a wingspan of six feet. As adults, their food intake is about eight ounces of meat per day, but while still growing, they require more. "A rabbit a day will keep them going," he said.
The project will continue for five years and it is hoped that 10 to 12 chicks will be brought to Glenveagh each year for the next four years. Because of a particularly poor breeding season in Scotland, only six could be taken this year, after a search of 120 nests. The golden eagle normally lays two eggs and only one chick can be taken from a nest.
Mr O'Toole said similar projects found the survival rate for the first year to be as low as 20 to 40 per cent but he hoped the birds would do much better in Glenveagh. They are not expected to breed for another five years and they will be radio-tagged for four years.
The total cost of the project is £40,000 a year and the largest contributions came from the Millennium Fund, the Heritage Council and Udaras na Gaeltachta.
Sheep farmers in Donegal have been reassured through contact with their counterparts in Scotland that lambs are generally safe from golden eagles although new-born lambs can be at risk.
When the cages are opened in six weeks, the chicks face an uncertain future. "The human threat is the biggest threat - either through poisoning or shooting," Mr O'Toole said.