{"id":198,"date":"2007-07-20T16:03:04","date_gmt":"2007-07-20T15:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/?p=198"},"modified":"2007-07-20T16:03:04","modified_gmt":"2007-07-20T15:03:04","slug":"fly-my-pretties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/?p=198","title":{"rendered":"Fly my pretties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/red_kite800.jpg\" title=\"red_kite800.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/red_kite800.jpg\" alt=\"red_kite800.jpg\" height=\"467\" width=\"620\" \/><\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I love stories like this.<\/p>\n<p>Red kites are being <a href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.ie\/irishexaminer\/pages\/story.aspx-qqqg=ireland-qqqm=ireland-qqqa=ireland-qqqid=37782-qqqx=1.asp\" target=\"_blank\">re-introduced to the Irish countryside<\/a> after an absence of some 200 years (we&#8217;ve lost most of our big birds of prey).<\/p>\n<p>John Gormley, the Environment Minister, was in Co Wicklow to see 30 kite chicks released into the wild. The birds were brought from Wales.<\/p>\n<p>These tales always catch my fancy. It&#8217;s heartening to see humans have the capacity to restore what we&#8217;ve destroyed, even if it&#8217;s just a little at a time.<\/p>\n<p>The red kites became extinct in Ireland because of encroachment on their habitat and an active policy by some people to kill them.<\/p>\n<p>Granted, the Irish programme may not be on the ambitious scale of Sergi Zimov&#8217;s scheme to <a href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.net\/2007\/07\/10\/frozen-baby-mammoth-10000-years-old-found-almost-intact\/\" target=\"_blank\">re-wild Siberia<\/a> mammoths and all, but it&#8217;s a start. Sadly, we&#8217;ll never resurrect the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Irish_elk\" target=\"_blank\">Elk<\/a> (see a skeleton <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/patrick_dockens\/483906188\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>) or re-introduce bears and wolves, but I can live with a (relatively) clean conscience knowing we&#8217;re doing what we can to preserve and protect what we have left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love stories like this. Red kites are being re-introduced to the Irish countryside after an absence of some 200 years (we&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17,53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tinyplanetblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}