Dead or alive? Mystery over ‘murder’ of golden eagle
By Auslan Cramb and Rozina Sabur
A “missing,the GOLDENcentre presumedeagleof a stand-offthat murdered”was pronouncedbetweenis at a Scottish sporting estate and one of Britain’s biggest wildlife charities.
When Bird 338 stopped sending signals from its satellite tag, the RSPB accused the estate of foul play.
But in a twist worthy of a murder mystery, it appears the bird may have been spotted alive by the estate’s head gamekeeper. The estate is now considering legal action against the charity and an estate spokesman said the RSPB’s allegations were “reckless and defamatory”.
The RSPB and Police Scotland opened an inquiry at North Glenbuchat Estate in Aberdeenshire last week when a signal from a tag, attached to the protected raptor as part of a conservation project, vanished.
The RSPB claimed it was the latest in a series of incidents at the estate, with grouse shooting in general often blamed by conservationists for the illegal persecution of raptors.
For its part, the estate said it had been wrongly linked to eagle disappearances and it has released a video which it claims shows the missing bird.
An estate spokesman said: “It’s a shocker, the implication is pretty clear.
“There’s no doubt the transmitter has stopped working. They [the RSPB] say the suggestion is that the bird died and from what they have released they believe that the estate is implicated.” The head keeper filmed and photographed eagles on Saturday and last Thursday and has sent the footage to the police.
Laura Sorrentino, the estate director, said: “The RSPB allegations have been reckless and defamatory and the matter is now in the hands of our lawyers.
“We cannot be as certain that the Saturday afternoon footage is the same eagle but the head keeper is more confident that the later photographs could be the 338-tagged bird. We have submitted both to police and what this does show is that eagles not only exist on our estate but are welcome.”
Ian Thomson, RSPB Scotland head of investigations, said the police agreed that the circumstances were suspicious. He claimed the tags were “very reliable” and said the signal stopping strongly suggested “the bird has died”.
A charity spokesman said: “If the estate have given the footage to the police then we would welcome that.”