I love stories like this.
Red kites are being re-introduced to the Irish countryside after an absence of some 200 years (we’ve lost most of our big birds of prey).
John Gormley, the Environment Minister, was in Co Wicklow to see 30 kite chicks released into the wild. The birds were brought from Wales.
These tales always catch my fancy. It’s heartening to see humans have the capacity to restore what we’ve destroyed, even if it’s just a little at a time.
The red kites became extinct in Ireland because of encroachment on their habitat and an active policy by some people to kill them.
Granted, the Irish programme may not be on the ambitious scale of Sergi Zimov’s scheme to re-wild Siberia mammoths and all, but it’s a start. Sadly, we’ll never resurrect the Elk (see a skeleton here) or re-introduce bears and wolves, but I can live with a (relatively) clean conscience knowing we’re doing what we can to preserve and protect what we have left.
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Sounds fair enough – bearing in mind that many of the habitats in which ancient fauna lived have since been destroyed by mankind or altered by climate, as you say, it’s good that some people are making these efforts to restore parts of the wild to its former self.