A British red kite emerges from an aviary in the remote hills of western Spain and takes flight. At six months old, this is its first taste of freedom. Without a sound, it soars high in the sky above scrubland and within seconds disappears from view into a wooded valley in the distance.
It is the latest release in a conservation story that has come full circle. Nearly four decades ago, the birds were extinct in England and Scotland with just a few pairs left in Wales. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, red kite chicks from Spain and Sweden were released in the Chilterns on the Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire border.
It proved so successful that the species is now thriving across the UK, with estimates of more than 6,000 mating pairs or about 15% of the world's population. Dr. Ian Evans, from Natural England, was one of the early pioneers. He said: There were a lot of unknowns. The first lot we released, we thought they might just die or they might just move away. In 1991, we had our first breeding pairs and that was really an eye-opener because we thought 'well, this can be successful'. That was the springboard for establishing other release sites in England and Scotland.
British-born red kite chicks have now been taken to south-west Spain as part of a four-year project to revive the population there from the brink of extinction. The region has fewer than 50 mating pairs due to predators like the eagle owl and human factors such as illegal poisoning and electrocution. In 2022, conservationists were granted special licenses from Natural England to collect red kite chicks, mostly from Northamptonshire, and send them over to the Extremadura region of Spain.
More than 120 chicks have been collected, with about 30 exported each year. The chicks are flown to Madrid and then transported 240 miles (385km) south to a wildlife hospital in Villafranca de los Barros, run by Accion por el Mundo Salvaje (AMUS). Here, each chick is weighed, measured, and tagged before being fitted with a GPS backpack which allows experts to track them.
The birds are then moved to holding aviaries near the Portuguese border for two weeks to acclimatize to their new surroundings. The release site is quiet and remote. There is a strong stench of rotting flesh coming from a sheep's carcass that has been left to entice red kites to feed here. As the gate is removed, I half expect the chicks to rush out but, except for a few flutters inside the aviary, nothing happens. It takes several hours, as though they are building up courage, before one by one they leave the safety of the aviary behind and fly off into the wild.
Now is the exciting moment when they are in the wild, they can learn to search for food, to avoid predators, to interact with other species in the area... thanks to the GPS we are going to closely monitor these birds we have released, Alfonso tells me. But for AMUS field technician Sofia Marrero, it is also a nerve-wracking time. The mortality for raptors in general is really high during the first years of their life, she explains. The biggest threats to their survival are from predators and natural causes.
So far, the conservation project has yielded three mating pairs that have produced two surviving chicks. With more tagged red kites reaching sexual maturity next year, there is hope for a significant increase in their population. Experts believe that this project could potentially guide similar efforts across other regions in Spain where red kites once thrived but have now become nearly extinct.
It is the latest release in a conservation story that has come full circle. Nearly four decades ago, the birds were extinct in England and Scotland with just a few pairs left in Wales. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, red kite chicks from Spain and Sweden were released in the Chilterns on the Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire border.
It proved so successful that the species is now thriving across the UK, with estimates of more than 6,000 mating pairs or about 15% of the world's population. Dr. Ian Evans, from Natural England, was one of the early pioneers. He said: There were a lot of unknowns. The first lot we released, we thought they might just die or they might just move away. In 1991, we had our first breeding pairs and that was really an eye-opener because we thought 'well, this can be successful'. That was the springboard for establishing other release sites in England and Scotland.
British-born red kite chicks have now been taken to south-west Spain as part of a four-year project to revive the population there from the brink of extinction. The region has fewer than 50 mating pairs due to predators like the eagle owl and human factors such as illegal poisoning and electrocution. In 2022, conservationists were granted special licenses from Natural England to collect red kite chicks, mostly from Northamptonshire, and send them over to the Extremadura region of Spain.
More than 120 chicks have been collected, with about 30 exported each year. The chicks are flown to Madrid and then transported 240 miles (385km) south to a wildlife hospital in Villafranca de los Barros, run by Accion por el Mundo Salvaje (AMUS). Here, each chick is weighed, measured, and tagged before being fitted with a GPS backpack which allows experts to track them.
The birds are then moved to holding aviaries near the Portuguese border for two weeks to acclimatize to their new surroundings. The release site is quiet and remote. There is a strong stench of rotting flesh coming from a sheep's carcass that has been left to entice red kites to feed here. As the gate is removed, I half expect the chicks to rush out but, except for a few flutters inside the aviary, nothing happens. It takes several hours, as though they are building up courage, before one by one they leave the safety of the aviary behind and fly off into the wild.
Now is the exciting moment when they are in the wild, they can learn to search for food, to avoid predators, to interact with other species in the area... thanks to the GPS we are going to closely monitor these birds we have released, Alfonso tells me. But for AMUS field technician Sofia Marrero, it is also a nerve-wracking time. The mortality for raptors in general is really high during the first years of their life, she explains. The biggest threats to their survival are from predators and natural causes.
So far, the conservation project has yielded three mating pairs that have produced two surviving chicks. With more tagged red kites reaching sexual maturity next year, there is hope for a significant increase in their population. Experts believe that this project could potentially guide similar efforts across other regions in Spain where red kites once thrived but have now become nearly extinct.
