Study identified eight areas that can sustain a population and government has given £1m for recovery programme
“The world is grown so bad that wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.” So wrote Shakespeare in Richard III, in a line of social commentary that feels ever more relevant with age.
A note of good news then, in a world of so much bad, that the eagles the Bard was probably referring to could finally be reintroduced to England after more than 150 years.
The golden eagle, which was common in Shakespearean England – and which he mentioned more than 40 times, according to some scholars – has been largely absent from the country’s skies, with only a handful of pairs seen in the past 150 years.
The majestic bird of prey with a 2-metre wingspan has been effectively extinct in England since the last native golden eagle is thought to have died in 2015, having lived alone in the Lake District. Their decline was largely due to centuries of persecution from gamekeepers and farmers, who viewed them as a threat to lambs and game birds.
