So many people are bird-conscious today, not always for the same reasons. Sean Mac Connell in this newspaper last Thursday told of attempts to save the grey partridge. There were fewer than 70 in the midlands. Today, unfortunately, he tells us that there has been further decline. But the project co-ordinator Dr Brendan Kavanagh is optimistic, though in need of continuing funding. In a different category is the effort to save birds of prey in the Alps. These are specifically the Lammergeier or Bearded Vulture. A carrion feeder - which has its uses. But this one does not join other carrion eaters; it consumes only the corpses it finds itself. It keeps to high and rocky mountains and has the curious habit of dropping bones it finds from a height on to hard surfaces to break them so that it can eat the marrow. Topically it will be this Monday, June 29th that a group known as Alp Action will release two new young birds in the area of Mont Blanc. Already 87 of these birds have been released into the wild since the start of the program of repopulating them began in 1986 (in Austria) and since 1987 in Haute Savoie in France. The newly-released birds have been named Republic 12 and Republic 13 in tribute to the French Minister of the Environment.
Five sites have been so far used: Hohe Tauern in Austria, Haute Savoie in France, the Mercantour National Park also in France, near the Italian frontier, the Grisons in Switzerland and Argentera in Italy. But the 86 already released are thought not to be enough to ensure the survival of the breed. In the first place only 30 per cent of the birds released survive to adulthood, which is 7 or 8 years. The first birds hatched were in Haute Savoie, in April 1997. Since then there have been birds killed by accident or through human stupidity - thus Republic 5 was shot by a poacher in November 1997. It will be at least ten years more, writes the columnist Jean-Jacques Marteau, before the re-introduction can be declared a success. Patient work, indeed.