Restoring the wild
In his new book, ornithologist and ecologist Roy Dennis reflects on 60 years of rewilding our skies, woods and waterways
In his new book, ornithologist and ecologist Roy Dennis reflects on 60 years of rewilding our skies, woods and waterways.
Some 53 summers ago, a plane from Norway carrying some very special passengers landed on Fair Isle, where I was warden at the famous bird observatory. Four boxes were unloaded onto the runway. Opening the first gave me my first-ever sighting of a young – but nevertheless enormous – White-tailed Eagle.
My boss, the charismatic George Waterston, had asked me to rear the birds for release on the island. It was my first involvement with a reintroduction programme, and brought an excitement that has lasted all my life. In February this year I thought of that first eagle as I watched the satellite track of a young bird from Scotland, which we had released on the Isle of Wight as part of a project to restore the species to England.
It had left the island in September 2019, just one month after its release, and had lived and wandered through England for 18 months. It was so thrilling to see its journey across the western approaches of the Solent, heading back home to join the others on the island.
Friends made
Like all good projects, our work on the Isle of Wight has brought with it the camaraderie of working with likeminded people, a thread that recurs throughout Restoring the Wild. The translocation of young Western Ospreys from Scotland to Rutland Water made a great friend of Tim Appleton at Rutland Water, a larger-than-life personality who created that marvellous nature reserve.
Visiting his Birdfair one year, I was humbled by how many people came to talk to me and thank me for working so hard to restore nature and bring back species like Western Osprey, Red Kite and the eagles; I see this book as a chance to say thank you to people like them for all their support. Restoring the Wild shows how we carried out our projects, the problems we faced and the opposition – often from unexpected
sources – that we encountered, and pays tribute to the people and organisations that helped make these reintroductions and translocations successful.
I started as a young boy interested in all sorts of wildlife and eager to help anything I saw in distress. I reared baby Jackdaws, grew and released tadpoles and lived a country life with domestic animals, which gave me a grounding in animal husbandry. Asking whether a creature was healthy or likely to die, whether there was anything I could do to save it, was a useful foundation for my future work.
When I started my ornithological career on Lundy, followed by a year on Fair Isle, I was mightily helped by great mentors and older birders who taught me skills and gave me good advice – I eagerly grasped every opportunity. I knew that I loved a life in the wild and that working 9-5 would never be my path.
My book starts with the sea eagle work, running from 1968 to the successful reintroduction by the Nature Conservancy, resulting in the first breeding in 1985. Those were exciting years, sometimes travelling to Norway to help collect the youngsters and then, as RSPB Highland Officer, being closely involved in helping the released birds settle safely in the countryside and start to rear chicks.
From 1960-63, I was one of the wardens at Loch Garten, protecting the only pair of breeding Western Ospreys. In these early years I got involved with another favourite species of mine, the beautiful Common Goldeneye, putting up big nestboxes in Strathspey. I had to wait a decade – until 1970 – for a female goldeneye to stay in Scotland and lay eggs in one of them. This was the start of a successful project to aid its colonisation of Scotland.
Kites flying
One of the most gratifying recovery projects has been Red Kite which, when I was a boy, was restricted to a handful of birds in mid-Wales. In 1989, after many years of frustration, I finally got permission to bring young kites from Sweden, and there’s now a good chance of seeing one overhead wherever you go in England and Wales. It has always been my view that birds should not be rare, found only on nature reserves, to be seen by a lucky few, but should live with us throughout the countryside, to be seen on our way to work or school. Work with mammals is much more difficult than with birds. After many false starts, I finally got permission to translocate Red Squirrels to Wester Ross, Highlands, and other places in northern Scotland.
The projects have been very successful, but there is a lot of unfinished business with species such as Eurasian Beaver, Eurasian Lynx and Wolf. The beavers are back but only in a limited way, as the government is still failing to recognise the animal’s importance to ecosystems and to our lives.
I’m sure it won’t be long before lynx is back in Scotland, for part of the book explores the disappointment felt by experts worldwide that the UK has been
so timid. On the positive side, though, we have helped ornithologists overseas to restore ospreys to several European countries, sometimes using Scottish birds, and Peregrines to the remarkable tree-nesting programme in northern Germany.
The book’s final chapter, Legacy, is about our latest projects and the process of handing over the baton to younger conservationists, such as my great friend Tim Mackrill, a protégé of Tim Appleton. Two of these projects hark back to my youth: restoring the ‘mullet hawk’, the old Hampshire name for Western Osprey, to Poole Harbour, working with the great Birds of Poole Harbour team, and the project which brought me full circle, returning White-tailed Eagle to the
Isle of Wight where it last nested in 1780, working with Forestry England and enthusiastic supporters on the island. It is magical to see the joy in those guys’ eyes when they tell me about seeing an eagle hunt mullet, or fly out into the English Channel to catch fish. It is also special to be involved with Charlie and Izzy Burrell at Knepp, with the return of breeding White Storks to Sussex.
Among the successes, though, there are always failures – another lesson learnt early and never forgotten.
Restoring the Wild examines projects on which we have been unable to make progress, for all sorts of reasons, but that doesn’t mean we’re giving up. There is wild still waiting to be restored, and people like me who want to make it happen. ■