This eagle is no more. He has ceased to be ...
(Image: Dorset Police)
It was bad enough when a pioneering project to reintroduce (over a ten year period) sixty white-tailed eagles - once Britain's largest bird of prey - into Norfolk was suddenly cancelled last year, following the usual complaints from local farmers and estate owners concerned about the impact on their precious sheep and game birds (i.e., the animals they slaughter and shoot for profit).
But now, two of the twenty-five eagles released on the Isle of Wight in 2019, but known to have spent time in East Anglia and other areas of southern England, have been found dead - and one very much doubts they died from natural causes (which is why toxicological examinations are being conducted).
Well done to those cunts responsible - you've performed a real public service by poisoning these rare and beautiful birds, extinct in the UK since the eary 20th-century, following extensive habitat destruction combined with many years of deadly persecution.
And congratulations also to the Conservative MP for West Dorset, Chris Loder, who has said eagles are not welcome in his constituency and that police should not be wasting time and money investigating how these two birds died. Of course, it might be noted that Mr. Loder had his 2019 election campaign funded to the tune of £14,000 by Ilchester Estates, which organises shoots in his constituency ...
However, speaking to The Guardian, Loder insisted that he was not influenced by the donation from the estate and his opposition to the presence of eagles in his constituency was based on fears for the impact this would have on farming:
"My views on sea eagles come from me being a farmer's son and my continued best efforts to represent the needs of West Dorset's farming community. I am not convinced that sea eagles being here are in their best interests. No briefing or consultation has taken place with me or others that I know of by Natural England, campaigners, nor the RSPB to explain how these risks are managed, nor to inform the farming community that indeed these birds are in Dorset.
My policy views are formed in the best interests of the rural community I represent, which is also my home and where I was brought up. Any suggestion that I have been unduly influenced in this view is completely wrong." [1]
Readers can decide for themselves what they think of this. Personally, I wish there were fewer farmers, landowners, gamekeepers, hunters, and members of parliament and far more birds of every variety and species, including raptors, in British skies.
And what D. H. Lawrence once wrote with reference to a mountain lion, we can say also of a white-tailed eagle; what a gap in the world it makes when one is killed, whereas how little missed would a couple of million human beings be [2].
Notes
[1] The article by Helena Horton in The Guardian (15 Feb 2022) from which I quote can be read in full by clicking here.
[2] See Lawrence's poem 'Mounain Lion', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 351-52.
